Have Heart, My Dear
by monroeslittle
Summary: Katniss "convinces" Snow, and is forced to marry Peeta. AU.
1. Chapter 1

a/n: This is a revision/continuation of a drabble that I posted on tumblr a while ago. It could probably use a lot more revising, but I'm sick of looking at it! The title and lyrics are from Snow Patrol's "Run." :)

* * *

_And I can barely look at you.  
But every single time I do,  
I know we'll make it anywhere,  
Away from here._

* * *

She wakes with a start, breathing in sharply at the panic that grips her.

But the mirror rattles on the wall, reminding her where she is. The train, and Peeta's heart pounds beneath her ear. She relaxes, only to frown a moment later: his heart shouldn't hammer like that in his sleep, and his grip on her arm is painful, and his body is tensed beside her.

"Peeta," she whispers, shifting onto her elbow to look at him.

His face is pinched, betraying the nightmare that he must be trapped in. She touches his cheek, uncertain how to wake him up; this is a first. She pushes the curls back from his forehead, and she's alarmed at how flushed his skin is.

She gasps when the hand on her wrist clenches painfully, but his body seems to seize against her, and his eyes snap open. "Peeta, Peeta," she breathes immediately, trying to soothe him. His sour, sleepy breath fans against her face when he looks at her. He breathes heavily, and she doesn't know what to do for him.

Impulsively, she kisses him.

His lips are dry, but his eyes shine in the dark when she draws back to look at him, and she needs to comfort him. To reassure him. They are on the train, safe. Together. She presses kisses to the flush in his cheek, to the sweat that beads at his brow, to the tremble in his chapped, worried lips.

He relaxes at last, and his arms come around her back to hold her to him. "I'm okay," he says.

His voice is hoarse, tired, but there's a softness in it, too, and she knows he means to comfort _her_.

It makes her throat constrict.

The wind from the crack in the window whips an icy breeze into the hot, stuffy room, and the sweat prickles on her back beneath her shirt when she presses closer to him, kisses him on instinct. She doesn't know why she does, or what to do next when his gaze finds hers in the dark.

"What was that for?" he asks.

"I don't know," she says.

His eyes drop to her lips, and she leans in with him, opening her mouth to his kiss. She knits her fingers into his hair, gasps when he touches his lips to her throat, and this isn't like the kisses for the camera. Hunger tightens in her stomach when he presses closer, and it's like her body knows how to do what's a mystery to her mind, responding to his kisses, his touch, his breath on her skin.

* * *

It's her idea for him to propose, and she doesn't expect it to upset him as much as it does. But he knows Haymitch is right: Peeta wanted it to be real. But it can't be.

No matter what, the Capital will always own this, their marriage. Them.

But when Peeta pushes into her that night, she knows that he is real. He is with her, and they are in this together. It's a small mercy, and it's what she clings to. She presses her fingers into his arms at the newness, but he kisses her cheek, her mouth, moving carefully, tenderly. This is real.

* * *

The relief at the realization that they've done it overwhelms her.

They convince Snow, and it feels for a moment like it did when Katniss used to come up from the water in the lake where her father taught her to swim; it was years ago that she swam with him, but she remembers how it felt to hold her breath under water until her lungs burned, how it felt when her face broke the surface, how it felt when she took a deep, painful breath in.

But her legs are heavy in the water now, and she knows she'll be dragged back down.

This relief is temporary, and anxiety at what is to follow settles heavily in her stomach.

The Quarter Quell is worse than she could've imagined.

To remind Panem that the strongest cannot always protect the weakest, the tributes for the 75th Hunger Games are to be chosen from among the youngest in Panem. It's impossible for a twelve-year-old to survive the Games, but this year one will.

Only twelve-year-olds are eligible to be Reaped this year.

The tributes from District 12 are tiny, starved creatures that look at Katniss with eyes that beg her to save them. She tries as hard as she can to coach them through the training, the interviews. One could win. After all, they'll be faced only with children as young as they are.

But her boy is killed in the bloodbath when the twelve-year-old from District 4 bashes his head in with a rock, and the mean, scrawny boy from District 2 buries an axe in her girl that night.

Their deaths hurt Katniss worse than she could've imagined.

Haymitch meets her gaze with bloodshot eyes. "Don't worry, Sweetheart," he says. "You'll learn."

_Not to care_, she thinks. _Not to hope. _Like Haymitch doesn't, like he learned not to.

Her wedding is two months later.

It's in the Capitol, and Katniss is told where to be, what to do, and when.

She is forced into a large, feathery monstrosity, and the doll her up: they have her in heels that are impossible to walk in, put long, fake white eyelashes on her that curl absurdly against her cheek, and the jewelry they give her has edges that rub the skin on her neck raw.

She isn't able to look at Gale, sitting with his family, and she hates that they were forced to come to this, hates the way that rich Capitol women paw fondly at Prim. But Prim laughs happily when Peeta twirls her in a silly, complicated dance, and her eyes shine with delight when Peeta insists that she needs to twirl him, too. Katniss smiles at the way he bends over backwards to try to twirl under her thin, pale arm.

"Peeta!" Prim giggles.

It's while she watches them that Snow comes to stand at her side.

"You make a lovely bride, Mrs. Mellark," he says.

She tries to smile. "Thank you."

His hand cups her elbow, and he leans in until she is able to smell the sickly sweet roses on his breath. "The fire you started has been quenched, my dear," he murmurs. "But do not think that I will no longer have my eye on you. No more time in the woods, Mrs. Mellark. No more afternoons with your _cousin_." His fingers dig into her arm, and she nods. Her gaze lands on Peeta, whose worry is clear when he catches her eye. "One last thing, and this is the most important." He pauses, and she is forced to look at him. "I want a baby from you."

The words ram into her like a fist to her stomach, and she chokes.

"But —"She looks away from him, and she swallows back her protests. She can't protest.

"In less than a year, Mrs. Mellark," Snow says. He chuckles abruptly, nodding at a woman who passes them, and Katniss plasters a smile on her face while Snow speaks lightly, carelessly. "I expect there to be a child in your belly on Reaping Day next year," he says. "After all, you are young. I'm certain that conception won't be difficult, and now you are married." His hand slides from her elbow to her back. "Reaping Day next year, or the odds will most certainly _not_ be in your favor. Do I make myself clear?"

Slowly, she nods. "Yes."

"Excellent." He drops his hand from back, only to take her hand in his, pressing his wet, papery lips to her fingers. "I'm glad we understand one another." He smiles. "Have a good night, Mrs. Mellark."

* * *

"What did he want?" Peeta asks, but she doesn't want to talk about it, and she mumbles that it was nothing. Snow wanted to threaten her, to remind her to be careful. Peeta takes her hand, squeezing, and the reception wraps up an hour later.

Snow arranges for them to be taken to in a large, ornate suite.

It ought to be awkward, but it isn't. Not at first.

They are exhausted, stressed, and Peeta flops onto the bed with a groan. Katniss is focused on stripping off her dress, on freeing her feet from the heels. She isn't able to take the fake white eyelashes off herself, and Peeta has to do it for her; he winces in sympathy when the stupid plastic things tug at her eyelids as he peels them off. He helps her take the pins from her hair, too.

But when quiet settles at last, the tension creeps up on them.

They sprawl across the bed tiredly, but everything that hasn't been said lingers between them, and makes a wet, dark slickness pool in her stomach at the idea that there could be cameras in the ceiling, that they could be under surveillance at that moment.

Peeta turns to face her, tucking his hand under his cheek. "I know it doesn't make things better, and I know you know this, but—but I need to say that I love you." He swallows thickly, and his gaze is apologetic. Like this is his fault, and it's his love for her that's to blame for their situation.

But he has to know it isn't like that. He has to know that he is what makes their situation _bearable_.

"I'm glad that it's you," she says. "That I'm in this with you."

He reaches for her hand, lacing their fingers, and his small, shy smile pulls a smaller, shyer smile from her. They stay like that, lying on the sheets rather than under them, and it isn't long before their exhaustion puts them to sleep with the lights on, and their fingers knotted between them.

* * *

She moves into Peeta's house in Victor's Village, and she tries to find ways to pass the days.

Honestly, she doesn't really know what to do with herself. She doesn't have school, isn't allowed to hunt, never bothered to have a hobby in the past. Peeta isn't at a loss, though. He bakes, and he draws, and he convinces Katniss to sprawl across the grass in the backyard with him to look at the stars.

She decides to learn how to cook.

But she ruins everything that she buys from the butcher, and her plan to learn how to cook doesn't last a week. Peeta becomes the cook, and Katniss is allowed to peel the potatoes for him, or to husk the corn. Or to dip her finger into the thick, sugary batter for a taste before Peeta shapes it into cookies, which he claims is a difficult, invaluable task.

She takes her bow in hand every once in a while, aims an arrow at a tree in the yard.

Just to remember how it feels.

Prim keeps Katniss company a lot, and Madge. Posy, too.

Rory starts to drop her off with Katniss before he walks with Prim into town to meet with their friends, and Katniss plays with her for hours. They make crowns from flowers while they sing rhymes that Posy likes. "To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, jiggety-jig; to market, to market, to buy a fat hog, home again, home again, jiggety-jog!" It makes Posy giggle until she is breathless, and Katniss stuffs her with food, too: with chocolates from town, with cookies that Peeta bakes, with warm cheese buns that make Posy's chubby little cheeks shine from the grease.

She never sees Gale. She tries not to think about him. She has Prim, Madge, Posy. Peeta.

"I thought that one was the teaspoon," Katniss says, pointing at the stars.

"That's the tablespoon," Peeta says. He likes to pretend that he sees shapes in the stars.

She indulges him.

"Oh. Right." She sighs, shifting to press her cheek to his heart, and a breeze skates over them. Summer's at it's hottest, but the heat will break soon, and winter will come. Prim might be Reaped for the second time. If not Prim, Rory. Or Vick. It'll be his first year. There's Madge, too.

Katniss knows what she needs to do to protect them.

Her mother gave her a recipe after the wedding. "It'll prevent a pregnancy," she explained. "Drink it — after." She touched Katniss on the hand, and Katniss took the recipe without a word.

But she can't use it.

She was with Peeta that way a dozen times on the train, and they were together in the weeks after, too, but she hasn't been able to bring herself to be with him since Snow told her what he expected. She misses the intimacy, though. She misses the kisses that made her warm, needy, breathless, misses the warm, shaky pleasure that thrummed in her at his touch, at his hands on her thighs, at his mouth on her breasts. She misses how full she felt when he was inside her, how nice she felt when she'd curl into his side after.

Three weeks after the wedding, she tries to do it.

She kisses him, and the crickets are a chorus through the open window when he responds, rolling her under him in the dark. His breath is hot against her throat as he trails kisses down her neck, and she arches into his touch. It isn't until their clothes have been discarded that she starts to panic, and she pulls back from him.

"I can't," she breathes. "I — I can't. I can't do it."

He rolls away from her.

It's a few minutes before he says into the dark that they don't have to do things she doesn't want to do. "I know we're married, but don't think that means you have to —" His voice is sad, but there is a determination to it, and she realizes he thinks that she kissed him because she felt like she had to, that she feels obligated to have sex with him but doesn't want to.

"Snow wants a baby," she says, abrupt. She forces herself to go on, explaining what Snow threatened. It's quiet, and she makes herself look at him. "I never wanted to have kids, Peeta."

He nods. Gently, he pushes the hair back from her forehead, and her throat constricts. "I thought he might try to make us have one eventually," he admits. "I didn't think it'd be this soon, though."

Her eyes burn, but she won't cry.

Instead, she does the only thing she can think to do: she sinks into his arms, lying in the quiet with him while he toys absently with her hair, and hours pass before she drifts off at last.

* * *

Thick, fluffy snow blankets District 12 when they have sex at last, knowing they have to.

Katniss stares at the ceiling after Peeta is finished. She isn't able to look at him.

But he presses a kiss to her shoulder, and his lips trail to her breasts, making her gasp when he takes a nipple in his mouth; he trails kisses across her stomach, and she curls her fingers into his hair when he puts his mouth on her. His thumb finds her clit, rubbing it the way that he's learned she likes, and her back arches off the bed when he replaces his thumb with his tongue.

She isn't able to think in that moment, forgets how to.

She blinks dazedly when he crawls back up, tastes herself on his tongue when he kisses her.

"I love you," he breathes, and she clings to him.

* * *

They have to take the train into the Capitol at least once a month. Peeta is asked to be a judge on a cooking show for an episode, or Katniss is expected to accompany Cinna to cut the ribbon at a new dress shop in the Capitol, or they are invited onto Caesar's TV show to talk about Peeta's art.

The events are always posed like something they might like to do, might _choose_ to do.

It's when she's in the Capitol that Katniss uses Cinna to inform Snow that she did it.

Snow was right. She is young, and it wasn't difficult to conceive.

She's in Cinna's studio, showing him the designs for dresses that Peeta drew for her talent, and she says that she doesn't think she can stomach the lunch he offers her. She's been sick a lot.

"I think I'm pregnant," she says.

Cinna stares at her, and she fidgets with a spool. She looks at him when he places a hand on her shoulder, squeezing. His eyes are soft, sympathetic, and he hugs her tightly before she leaves. She forces a smile for him. But she cries into Peeta's neck that night on the train back to District Twelve.

She doesn't know the children from Twelve who are Reaped two months later. Both are killed within minutes.

* * *

Her nightmares have been terrible in the past, but it's nothing to what they become while she is pregnant. She doesn't sleep for more than a few hours at a time before Peeta wakes her from nightmares, and her throat is raw from the screams that woke him.

But the pregnancy isn't a nightmare that she can wake from.

It isn't something she can hide from, and her body swells with the child. Her heart jumps the first time she feels it move. She's paralyzed at the flutter in her stomach, gripping the bannister on the stairs with sudden, wrenching terror. She tries to calm down, coaching herself to breathe in, to breathe out, but she can't.

She sinks to her knees on the stairs, trembling, and that's how Peeta finds her.

Peeta's the reason she manages to hold out as well as she does, but she isn't able to be honest with him, to confess how the baby feels like a stranger in her, how she worries that she'll hate it.

The exhaustion slows her limbs, and the sickness makes it worse, and she doesn't leave the house on most days.

Effie arrives in District Twelve for the Victory Tour, tutting at how sickly Katniss looks.

Her gaze rakes over Katniss's unkempt hair, pale face, the circles beneath her eyes, how bony she remains despite how large her belly is. She stands beside the tub while Katniss showers, insisting repeatedly that Katniss wash her hair _at least twice, please! _She cakes Katniss's face in powder, plucks her eyebrows, and forces her into green heels that match the silky green dress from Cinna.

The party that District Twelve holds for the victor from District Four is small, but it is as miserable nonetheless, and she ducks from conversation to conversation, munching on pretty little cakes that Peeta made that morning for the occasion.

She manages at last to excuse herself to a chair against the wall, but her reprieve is short.

"There's sugar on your lip," Finnick says, brushing his thumb across her mouth. She jerks away from his hand, and he chuckles. "It's nice to see you, too." His gaze sweeps over her. "Congratulations."

"Thank you."

He moves to sit with her. "He could demand a lot worse things from you," he says.

She frowns. "What?"

"Our illustrious leader," Finnick says. "If this is what he asks from you, you don't have it nearly as hard as I suspect you think you do." He steals a lemon square off her plate, eating it in one bite, and he smiles at her. "After all, he could make you be like me."

She doesn't know what he means, but his gaze makes her uncomfortable.

It's once she's in bed that night that it occurs to her what he might've implied. She assumed that Finnick enjoyed his life in the Capitol, that he loved how people fawned over him, loved the ridiculous clothing he wore, the ridiculous TV shows they featured him on, the fame, the wealth.

But he might not.

She presses a kiss to the cotton that covers Peeta's chest, and the baby moves in her like it agrees.

* * *

Prim asks her what she wants to name the baby, but Katniss hadn't really thought about a name, or a gender, or the fact that there is a real, living baby in her belly. She shrugs. "What do you think?" she asks. "Actually, why don't you pick a name?" Prim's eyes widen, and Katniss laughs.

"Do you mean it?" Prim asks. "Can I pick the name? Katniss!" she squeals, delighted.

Two days later, she comes back to Katniss with two possible names. In the days that follow, Katniss learns that Prim consulted everybody in her search for a name: their mother had a say, Madge, too, Delly Cartwright, Rory, Mrs. Hawthorne, the girls at school with Prim.

In a way, Katniss likes that. It's like District Twelve picked the name.

When they are guests on his show, Caesar offers to help them pick a name. "How about Caesar?" he asks, laughing, and Peeta chuckles with Caesar before he explains that, in fact, they already have a name for a girl as well as for a boy picked out. Caesar presses his hand to his heart when Peeta says that Prim picked them.

Katniss relishes in it. The Capitol isn't allowed to choose what this baby will be called.

He's born that spring: this tiny, screaming thing with black hair plastered to his head.

Labor takes _days_, but her mother delivers the baby at last. Katniss slumps against Peeta, who presses a shaky, tearful kisses to her temple, and her mother puts the baby in her arms. Her baby. Her _son_, and the possessiveness rises in her suddenly. Her baby, with his plain, solid name. His good, traditional, District Twelve name. Ash Mellark.

His tiny, tiny fingers clutch suddenly at Peeta's thumb, and she is madly in love with her son.

* * *

The cameras crowd the house before Ash is a week old, driving Katniss to hide with him in the closet. She nurses him in the small, cramped space, whispering a song into his downy black head.

But Peeta finds her, and he coaxes her back to the kitchen. The sooner they talk to the thin, purple-skinned interviewer, the sooner she'll leave, and she'll take the cameras with her.

Katniss allows Octavia to fix her hair, her face, her nails, but she draws the line when the woman wants to touch up Ash, who she says is "cute as a button, _of course_, but we really need to bring out the pretty blue in his eyes, and a little —" She backs off at the glare that Katniss levels at her.

The interview drags on for hours, but Peeta settles his hand on Katniss's knee, and they manage.

* * *

They leave Ash with her mother when they go to the Capitol for the Games.

She thinks they might have a chance to save the boy who's Reaped that year. He towers over her, is seventeen, and wears his anger on his pinched, mean face. There are sponsors in the Capitol who love tributes like that; he's an easier sell than the scrappy, scared tributes they usually have.

He is stabbed in the chest in the bloodbath. She hates that she hoped.

She returns to District Twelve, and Ash blinks sleepily at her when she takes him from his cot.

Snow will put him in the Games, and he'll be killed. She knows it.

It won't matter how old he is, or how strong. Snow will arrange for the Games to kill him.

She isn't able to sleep, and she drinks the wine that's in the kitchen; she thinks it must've been a gift. It's strong, but it isn't as bad as the liquor that Haymitch drinks. She drinks the whole bottle.

* * *

But things are calm in the days that follows, and their life grows quiet. They aren't asked to visit the Capitol for months at a time, allowing them to settle into life in Twelve.

Katniss plants a garden in the backyard with Ash, and she tries to read the novels that Madge gives her, but they are as dreadful as she thought they would be. Madge laughs when Katniss admits that she despised what little she managed to read in one. She paints the kitchen with Peeta.

It's how she divides her day. Time with Madge, with Prim.

Time with Peeta.

She learns his body in those quiet, humid summer months in a way that she never really did in the days on the train, or in the months before Ash was born. He learns her, too. Learns what she likes, learns how to make her gasp, breathless, needy, desperate for more, for him, for everything.

He backs her up slowly while she deepens the kiss, and the breath leaves her in a rush when he hoists her up suddenly, hauling her onto the counter. His mouth trails along her neck, and his hands push her skirt up to bunch at her waist. She slides her hands down his back, grasping his belt to bring his hips flush to hers. He groans into her skin, and she fumbles to unclasp his belt.

He tugs at her shirt until one breast is bared, and she surges into him when he pinches her nipple.

In the next moment, her underwear is torn down, and he thrusts into her with one stroke.

She takes his face in her hands to tilt him up for a kiss, only to break the kiss when her elbow knocks a basket off the counter, spilling muffins on the floor. He laughs, and she pushes her fingers into his hair while his fingers dig into her thighs, angling her hips to allow him to hit that one spot that makes her toes curl. She breathes his name, knotting her hands in his hair as he pounds into her.

He starts to talk, murmuring that he loves how tight she is for him, how good it feels to fuck her.

She loses her rhythm at his words, but he knows what it does to her when he talks, knows how his words always push her over; he starts to thrust wildly into her when she clenches around him.

Afterward, she hugs his hips with her knees.

She pushes the hair back from his face, smiling, and he presses a soft, sweet kiss into her palm.

Over his shoulder, she spots Ash in a swing at the table.

He blinks innocently at her, and laughter tugs at her mouth.

He isn't fussy, or loud; noise doesn't seem to bother him, including apparently the noise his parents make when they have sex. His gummy pink smile comes easily, and Katniss adores that about him: the Peeta in him. Katniss smiles at him, and he smiles back.

"Prim was like that," her mother says at dinner that night. "Happy." She pauses, glancing at Katniss, and her lips twitch. "Not you."

She isn't able to taper her smile, and Peeta doesn't try to. Katniss glares at them both.

Prim isn't at dinner; she is with the Hawthornes. It turns out it was a big night for her: Rory kisses her that night, and the story bursts from Prim as soon as she sees Katniss in the morning. She describes it in detail, interrupting herself repeatedly to squeal in delight.

She is happy, and Katniss is, too. It's strange, but it's the truth.

For a short, lovely while, she is able to imagine that her life is one that she chose for herself.

* * *

Peeta isn't a mentor for the 78th Games. After all, they need one male Victor to mentor, which means that Katniss can drag Haymitch to the Capitol while she leaves Ash safely in Peeta's care.

She should've known how awful it would be to face the Capitol without him.

She wants to call him, but she can't; the phones are tapped, and they'd listen in.

The Games this year drag on for weeks, taking place in dark passages that twist into small, secret chambers in a cavern under the ground. It's filled with black, putrid sludge; stalactites drop suddenly to impale the tributes, and the worst is the giant, mutated rats that gnaw on a girl's face while her shrieks echo in the cave.

But it's when Katniss without Peeta that she gets to know the other Victors in the Capitol.

She meets Woof from District Eight, who talks about how he likes to work with wood, whittling a whistle for Ash, and he laughs in the rich, booming way that her father used to. Seeder from District Eleven tells Katniss about Thresh's family, and Rue's. How they are safe, unhurt. Unpunished.

She talks to Wiress from District Three after the woman is kind to her.

It's two weeks into the Games, and Katniss watches the boy from District One rape the thin, fourteen-year-old girl from District Twelve, who'd survived longer than anybody thought she would.

He kills her after he is finished with her, and Katniss stumbles away from the screens, vomiting in the corridor, trembling. But Wiress wraps her arms tightly around Katniss, murmuring nonsensical things to her, and cradles Katniss against her chest until the shaking stops at last.

"My poor dear," Wiress soothes. "There, there. My dear, oh. Oh, I know. Let it out."

Three days later, Katniss learns what's done to Finnick.

He explains it to her while they drink sweet red wine from District Four.

Johanna tells Katniss her story, too, with sharp, angry words. It's when Johanna's lips are stained purple from the wine that Katniss sees clearly in her eyes how much she wishes she could've saved her family, how much she wishes she could take back that one refusal when she was a girl.

Katniss is asked to tea with Snow the night that the Games are finished at long, long last.

He says that he thinks Panem would love to see her son with a sibling.

"One year, Mrs. Mellark," he says, and she nods.

She doesn't have a choice, and she isn't going to make Johanna's mistake. She'll do as she's told.

* * *

"We have to leave Ash with Prim next year," she says. "I can't be in the Capitol without you."

Peeta nods. "From now on, we go together," he says, his fingers in her hair.

She closes her eyes, listening to his heart thump steadily beneath her ear, and he smells like dill, like cinnamon, and there's mint, too, which means earlier he must've made those chocolate mint cookies that Posy likes. Already, she knows she'll sleep better tonight than she has in nine weeks.

There's a lot she needs to tell him, including the demand from Snow. Tomorrow. She'll tell him tomorrow.

* * *

Her pregnancy isn't as bad this time. She isn't as sick, or as scared. But the idea that she's forced to have her children for Snow weighs on her. It isn't supposed to be like this; her children aren't supposed to be a sick, twisted way to control her, but they are. She wouldn't have had them on her own terms, wouldn't have chosen them, wouldn't have risked them.

But what she would've chosen is irrelevant.

She didn't have a choice, and she was forced to have a baby, and he tore her heart from her chest with a tiny, tiny fist. She loves him dearly, impossibly, isn't able to fathom world in which he wasn't born. She loves him, and it'll be the same with the next one. But she didn't choose either.

She knows that it hurts Peeta. This is what he wanted, but it isn't how he wanted it.

They never talk about that, though; it's easier not to.

She reminds herself that it isn't Snow's baby. It's Peeta's.

But the Capitol is ready to take it from them.

Katniss is in an interview with Caesar while five months along, and he asks what this one will be named. Peeta isn't with her, can't come up with a lie on the spot, and Katniss panics. She isn't about to tell the truth, not when it might mean that the Capitol'll have people vote on her child's name like it's a contest. She won't let them have that.

"We asked Haymitch to pick," she says, trying not to look like a panicked, flustered liar.

"How sweet," Caesar says, patting her hand.

She knows that she doesn't really have to ask Haymitch to pick the name, but she does.

Peeta thinks that Haymitch would like to; they're the closest that the man has to family, and he is family to them.

He's in a stupor when Katniss finds him, slumped in a chair on the porch while geese cluck about stupidly in his yard, and she takes the bottle from his hand to splash what's left in it on his face.

He yelps, and one bloodshot eye glares at her. "Something the matter, Sweetheart?" he growls.

"I told Caesar that you were going to pick this one's name," she says. He grumbles that he doesn't care what she told Caesar, and he wasn't aware that _she_ cared what she told Caesar. "I talked to Peeta," she continues, "and he likes the idea. Pick a name. Or two. One for a boy, one for a girl."

He sighs. "Fine. Daisy." He looks pleased with himself. "Or Wheat. Those fit, right?"

She glares at him. "I should've known you wouldn't give a shit," she snaps, and he chuckles.

But Prim mentions at dinner on Sunday that she thinks Larkspur is a pretty name for a girl. She says she hasn't been able to settle on another good name for a boy, though. Haymitch is at the table with them. "My brother was named Davey," he says. He cuts into the chicken on his plate. "My old man, too, and his old man. It was a family name. Got one like that?" He looks at Peeta.

"Actually, I don't think there is a name that runs in my family," Peeta says.

Prim says there isn't a good, old Everdeen name either, or at least she doesn't think there is, and she starts to talk about their father's mother, Tawny, who died a few years before Prim was born.

But the name sits with Katniss that night.

Peeta has it on his mind, too, and he brings it up. He likes it. "What do you think?" he asks. It's an older name, one that existed in a time before Snow, before the Capitol. Before the Games.

Davey Mellark is born a month after the 79the Games, smaller than his brother was, with fine, colorless hair on his head; six months after the Games, Katniss knows that he takes after his father with his soft yellow curls. Haymitch eyes the baby with one bloodshot eye, and he smiles.

* * *

Once in a while, she shoots arrows at the trees in the yard, and she tries not to miss the woods as desperately as she does. For a while, the woods were everything to her. The woods, and Prim. She hasn't lost Prim, and now she has things that she could've have dreamed she'd have in the past: food, her boys, Peeta.

He is focused on his sketches, but she nudges his shoulder with her foot.

He runs his hand up her leg absently in reply.

She sighs. "Pee_ta_," she whines, tapping his arm, and he glances at her at last. Immediately, his lips quirk up in amusement. He smirks, pressing a kiss the arch of her foot. She wrinkles her nose, but he places a kiss on her ankle, starting to trail kisses up her calf, and he slides his hands up her thighs.

Suddenly, his fingers circle her knees, and she yelps when he drags her down the bed.

Her shirt rides up, and he presses a wet, sloppy kiss to her stomach. She squeals, pushing at his head, but he nips her skin playfully in reprimand; his head is beneath her shirt now, and she laughs breathlessly while he kisses a line between her breasts. She tugs at her shirt, managing to yank it up over his head. She tosses it aside, and he grins impishly at her, surging up to kiss her.

"I missed you," he says, sliding his hands down her back.

They haven't been together since Davey was born, and she fumbles breathlessly to pull his shirt off, to push his pants down his hips. His fingers strum teasingly at her sides; he kisses his way back to her breasts. She hisses at his touch, tugging at his hair to remind him how sore they are.

He moves to kiss her, and she hooks her ankle behind his leg to flip them.

She brushes her lips against his cheek, leaning in as though to kiss him only to pull back teasingly when he tries kiss her, and he grins at her, squeezing her hips. She grins back at him.

* * *

Gale asks Leevy to marry him in March, and the toasting is in April.

It makes her chest tight, looking at Gale. He's a stranger to her.

But it's impossible to take her eyes off him, his hair slicked back neatly for the toasting, his shirt pressed, his smile playful when he raises the bread to Leevy's lips. Katniss hasn't spoken to him in years. He didn't want to be her friend after her wedding in the Capitol, and he didn't look back.

"Do you miss him?" Madge asks, pruning a brown, slumped bud

"I used to," Katniss says. She wipes the sweat from her brow. Summer is miserable this year, and she doesn't know why she bothers to weed her dry, dying garden. She looks at Madge, who sits cross-legged with Davey in her lap. "I used to miss him a lot. But things changed. He's changed."

It's quiet, and Ash runs across the yard to Katniss, thrusting daisies proudly at her. She gives a happy, dramatic gasp. "_Thank_ you, Little Goose!" He beams at her, stumbling off to find more to pick for her.

"When we were kids, I thought I loved him," Madge says. "Gale." Katniss tries to hide her surprise, but Madge smiles knowingly at her. "It wasn't completely unfounded — we'd kissed. But it was years ago, and, well, I think I always knew that he'd never really want to marry a merchant girl."

"Probably not," Katniss agrees. She remembers the way Gale used to talk about Madge.

"I guess it might've in another life. It's strange to think about, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"How things could've been different," Madge says. Her hair has started to curl in damp, frizzy loops, and she brushes it back. "If it weren't for the Games, do you think you'd have married Gale?"

Katniss blinks, startled. She doesn't see a point in dwelling on what _might_'ve happened.

But it's something that she was forced to consider years ago, and she knows that it's what Gale thinks, and it's what Peeta thinks. If it weren't for the Games, they assume Katniss would've settled down with Gale eventually. But she wouldn't have. "I never wanted to marry," she says. "If I hadn't been forced to, I wouldn't have. Besides, I never really thought about Gale like that."

"But you might've started to," Madge says, and Katniss doesn't bother to argue the point. "What about Peeta?"

"What about him?" Katniss asks.

"Who do you think he'd have married? I would've said Delly when were kids, but —"

"Delly is like a sister to him."

"Right. I guess he would've ended up with some nice, pretty girl like Flora Margrey, or Poppy Greenan. He used to be friends with them, right?" She shrugs. "I know Flora always liked him."

Katniss doesn't remember Poppy, but she remembers Flora, remembers how the girl liked to giggle with her friends in class, how she always wore dresses that strained against her breasts. "Those girls would've made him miserable," Katniss says, frowning. Peeta wouldn't have wanted to marry a silly, vain girl like Flora.

Madge shrugs. "Guess we'll never know," she says, her lips turned up in a small, amused smile.

Later that night, Katniss asks Peeta about Flora. "Do you remember her?" She tries to be casual.

"Sure," he says. "She was friends with Delly. Why?" He smiles at her.

"Madge talked about her today, and it made me curious. It's nothing." She shrugs to emphasize that it's nothing, and takes Davey from his swing to put him to bed while Peeta washes the dishes. Ash follows her up the stairs, chattering about a cool shiny rock that he found in the yard.

Peeta isn't finished with the dishes when Katniss returns to the kitchen. She doesn't care.

She grabs his arm, turning him away from the sink to face her.

He opens his mouth, and she sinks to her knees.

The warm soapy water on his hands drips to the floor while she unbuckles his belt, and he says her name with a laugh when she tugs his trousers down his hips. She glances at him. "Shush, or I won't put your cock in my mouth."

He presses his lips together pointedly, and she nods approvingly at him before takes his cock into her hand, leaning into swirl her tongue around the tip, and he grows hard quickly under her tongue. She takes him into her mouth, and he curses under his breath, swaying a little where he stands. They figured out how to do this years ago, and he thrusts his hips slightly, fucking her mouth. "Fuck." His hand sinks into her hair. "I love your mouth," he says. "_Fuck_. Suck it." She does, and he groans, and it isn't long before she wipes her mouth, rising to her feet.

She pulls his pants up for him.

"Just had a hankering?" he asks, amused. His cheeks are flushed.

She kisses him quickly. "Don't forget to wipe off Davey's swing," she says, patting his shoulder.

* * *

It's Prim's last year to be Reaped that year, and Katniss isn't able to breathe when Effie takes a slip from the bowl. For a moment, she's positive that it'll be Prim, that Snow always meant to have her sister Reaped a second time, to punish Katniss no matter what she did to appease him.

But it isn't Prim. Her eyes find her sister in the crowd.

She doesn't look at the girl who is Reaped, a thin, trembling fifteen-year-old from the Seam.

* * *

Her trips to the Capitol are the same these days. She is interviewed repeatedly on TV about ways to spice up a marriage, and Caesar laughs when she flushes, but he asks about her kids a lot, too, and she hates that she is supposed to share them with the world. That's what she's good for at this point, why she's dragged continually to the Capitol: to share her family with them.

Cinna dolls her up in sweet, modest dresses, pinning flowers in her hair, curled in ringlets.

She mentions it to Finnick.

He grins back at her. "You're supposed to look like a pretty little girl. Harmless. Forgettable," he says. She stares blankly at him, and his grin fades a little. "Haven't you figured it out yet? He wants you to be a boring wife, a boring mother. He wants the Capitol to be bored. To forget you."

"That's a good thing, isn't it?" she asks.

He shrugs, smiling sadly at her. "Depends on what he decides to do with you once they forget."

* * *

Once in a while, it's too much for her. There are days when she doesn't leave the bed, staring at the shadows that grow slowly, silently on the wall. It's worse in the weeks after the Games.

Their deaths are like hooks in her skin: a constant dull, throbbing pain that drags her down.

Mostly, she is able to live her life. But she remembers the tributes that thought she would save them, remembers the ones that knew she couldn't, and it's too much. She remembers Rue, remembers Thresh. She remembers the sixteen-year-old boy from the Seam, how he was determined to win the 81st Games, how he had two younger sisters, how his head was lobbed off.

* * *

She wakes with a thick, sour taste on her tongue, the sheets twisted around her legs. It's dark, but voices trickle from the small yellow gap at the door, and Katniss wipes the sleep from her eyes.

Her hair is a sweaty, tangled nest, and her reflection is waxy in the small, round mirror.

But she combs her fingers in her hair, fixing her braid, splashes water onto her face, and tugs on a sweater. As soon as she steps into the hallway, Peeta calls her name from the bathroom down the hall. "I lost Davey!" he says, turning in a circle. "Davey! Where did you go? Davey!" He raises his shoulder helplessly at Katniss, who bites back a smile. "He disappeared!" he exclaims.

On the mat beside the tub is a towel with a sizable, giggling lump under it.

"Have you looked in the cabinet yet?" Katniss asks.

Peeta runs to the cabinets, calling for Davey. The towel slumps over, laughing, and a foot peeks out. "He isn't in the cabinet!" Peeta says. "Let's think. Oh! I know! He might've turned _invisible_!"

Katniss gasps, and Peeta grasps at nothing in the air. "He might be in the corner," she suggests.

Peeta pats his hands along the wall, waving them around the room until at last Davey throws off his towel. "Here I am!" he cries, grinning. "I was under the — the towel the whole time, Papa!"

"The _towel_!" Peeta exclaims, clapping his hand to his forehead. "I should've known!"

Davey laughs, and he runs to Katniss, who squats to his height. "Mama, I was under the towel, and Papa was looking for me for _forever_, but I was in the towel _the whole time_!" He wraps his damp, naked arms around her neck, and she scoops him up. "He would've never, ever found me!"

"Papa's silly," Katniss says, carding her fingers in his curls.

Davey nods. "Yeah. I'm a — I'm a really good hider, too."

"You are," she agrees. She glances at Peeta, who grins back at her.

"Mama, look." Davey pushes his fingers into her face. "Look how pruney my fingers are! Look!"

* * *

She's in the Capitol for the 82nd Games when Snow gives her one year to have another child.

He says that he thinks Panem would love to see the Mellarks with a daughter.

She grits her teeth, reminding herself how little he's been in her life lately. How good she has it, and she'll do what it takes to keep her family safe. He hasn't touched somebody she loves yet, and she won't give him a reason to. But she's sick to her stomach that it will always be like this.

He'll always control her, always use her.

She learns from Chaff that there was a revolt in District Eleven.

It wasn't a large, calculated move. But there was a Mockingjay drawn in the loose, red dirt that covers the town, and chaos followed. Seventeen people were shot, and District Eleven is under curfew until the Peacekeepers are certain that those responsible for the drawing are punished.

She wants to go back to Snow, to ask him whether that's what this baby is about. She doesn't.

But she hopes the baby is a boy. It's the best she can do, the only way she can deny him.

"Have you decided who you'll ask for a name?" Peeta asks.

"You," she says. "You pick it."

She should've known he'd choose a flower for a girl, and it is a girl. Pennycress Mellark.

The boys crowd the bed to look at her. "She's pink," Ash says.

"She's wrinkly," Davey says, touching her foot. She _is_ a pink, wrinkly thing, but Katniss brushes her fingers over the dark, downy tuft on her squishy pink head, and her chest is tight at the knowledge that she couldn't stand for something to happen to this little girl, to her boys, to Peeta.

She wouldn't survive the loss, wouldn't survive a day without the pink, wrinkly thing in her arms.

But it's going to happen, isn't it?

Eventually, at least one is going to be Reaped.

That's at best. If she's lucky, it'll be one. One dead, and his siblings allowed to live, to mourn him. Or her. But Pennycress sucks on Davey's finger, and Ash tells Peeta that he wanted the baby to be a dog, and Katniss knows that it doesn't matter how lucky she is: she'll die with the child that Snow takes.

* * *

The cameras are at the door within a month, and they invade the house for six days.

It's a strain for Katniss to keep a pleased, pleasant face on. The ladies with the cameras want to watch her in the garden, in the kitchen; they want to watch her while she works on a puzzle with Madge, want to watch her while she nurses Pennycress, and Katniss puts her foot down at that.

But it's worse for the boys.

She isn't allowed to hide them away from the cameras.

Ash likes to talk, which means at first he is pleased to have an audience that hangs on every word he says. But he grows uncomfortable at the questions they ask, tugging nervously on his shirt when they want to know who his favorite tribute in the Games was. "He liked Tabby," Katniss says, stepping into the frame. "The girl from District 12." She smiles. "He wanted Tabby to win."

"Yeah." He nods slowly, uncertain. "She was pretty." He smiles. "Like Mama."

Davey isn't like his brother. He takes after Katniss, and he doesn't know what to do with the cameras. He twists his fingers in his hair at the questions, looking to Katniss for an answer, pressing his face into Peeta's hip when the women coo in delight at what a shy, sweet boy he is.

But the four loud, ridiculous woman leave with their cameras at last.

Davey tugs on Katniss's blouse. "I don't like to be on camera, Mama."

"Me, neither," she says, running a hand over his head.

But the boys are rowdy at dinner that night, are loud, are laughing, are her sweet, sweet boys, and the knot in her stomach unravels. The cameras are gone for now, and that's how Katniss has learned to live. In what's for now. Peeta makes the broccoli on Davey's plate sing to the ham in an effort to convince Davey to eat the vegetable, and Katniss smiles. That'll never be on camera.

* * *

They aren't at the house as often as Katniss's sister, or her mother. But around the time that Ash is born, Peeta's father starts come to dinner, and it becomes a regular thing; once or twice a month he'll come, and he'll bring Peeta's brothers with him. Both are married, although neither have children.

It's strange at first, having dinner with them. But Katniss knows how much it means to Peeta.

Bannock is quiet, and he is always a little awkward at dinner. But he teaches the boys a dozen different games to play with cards, and his quiet, awkward wife likes to dote on them. Peeta mentions to Katniss that he wonders why they haven't had a baby yet, but she knows he'd never ask Bannock.

Rye jokes a lot, loves to talk, to have the attention on him, and he's the one that the bakery will go to. He likes to bake, or he says he does, but Katniss doubts he's as good a baker as Peeta is. That's how it seems to be with Rye. He's a lesser Peeta, not quite as funny, or as nice. Not quite as good.

She likes Mr. Mellark the most, but it's hard to forget the way he allowed his wife to treat Peeta.

It isn't something she's talked about with Peeta, but Katniss has always held Mr. Mellark slightly responsible for how his wife abused Peeta, and she doesn't have it in herself to forgive him for it.

Mrs. Mellark never comes for dinner. Or she doesn't for years.

But Katniss opens the door one night, and Mrs. Mellark is beside her husband. Katniss doesn't know what to think, doesn't understand why the woman would suddenly, randomly decide to come to dinner after she'd ignored Peeta for years. But she's there, and she's got her eyes on the small, wriggling baby in Peeta's arms. "Let her grandmother hold her," she says, reaching for her.

Peeta glances at Katniss, but he allows his mother to take Penny.

"Look at you," Mrs. Mellark says, turning away from them. "Look at my pretty little girl."

This is why she came to dinner, and it's their most awkward dinner yet. But they get through it.

"Figures she wouldn't be able to resist a granddaughter," Rye says before he leaves, shrugging.

Once the boys have been put to bed, Katniss says it. "I know she's your mother, but —"

"I know," Peeta says. "I hate her, too. More than I should." He presses a kiss to her shoulder. "She's my mother," he says at last, "but she isn't my family." She looks at him, and she smiles softly when he meets her gaze. He's right. She kisses him softly, nosing his cheek, and he sighs into her neck.

* * *

Rory asks Prim to marry him, and Katniss listens to her sister gush for days about the proposal, Rory, the toasting, the house they'll live in, the children they'll have, the future, Rory, Rory, Rory. Katniss is happy for her; it's impossible not to be when her sister is ready to burst with joy.

But a girl from town is Reaped that year. She is dead an hour into the Games.

Katniss has nightmares for a month about the knife in her throat, and her pretty yellow hair, and the look on her face. The nightmares haunt her in the day, too, forcing her to imagine what it'll be like when the girl in the Games with pretty yellow hair is her niece, how it'll look when Rory's eyes in Prim's face are glassy with death, and it'll be her aunt Katniss who's to blame.

She smiles tearfully at Prim after the toasting, drawing her sister into a hug.

"I love you," Prim says, and the happiness in her voice is irrepressible.

"I love you, too," Katniss says, pretending to believe in the bright, happy future that Prim has planned for herself when Prim kisses her cheek, gushes about the cake, is oblivious to the world.

* * *

They know better than to allow Penny to sleep in their bed with them.

But when she catches a fever, they bring her into the bed to keep an eye on her throughout the night until she recovers. It isn't for more than a week, but after that she refuses to sleep in her cot without a fight. She wants to sleep in the bed with them, crying when they leave her in her cot, and Katniss swears that the boys weren't this fussy when they were a year old. Penny calls for "Pa_pa_!" from her cot between big, gulping sobs, screaming when they continue to ignore her.

Except that Peeta folds easily, trying to sneak Penny into the bed.

Katniss wakes to a fat baby knee wedged in her back, or to warm, wet breath on her neck while a chubby fist clutches at her braid, and she is careful not to jostle Penny when she turns under the covers, glaring at Peeta, and kicks him in the shins repeatedly until he returns the baby to her cot.

"It was to get her to sleep," he says, crawling back under the covers.

"Liar," Katniss says, but he pulls her to his chest, kisses her sleepily, and Penny is quiet in the cot.

* * *

She's curled up on the sofa next to Peeta when it happens, and she can't believe it's real.

It isn't possible, but it happened.

The girl from District Seven wins the Games when she buries a pickax in the mean, hulking boy from District One. Katniss sighs into Peeta's chest, glad that it's finished. Only it isn't. The girl stumbles to the boy, yanks the ax from his chest, and slits her throat.

Instantly, she's bled out. She's dead, and the 84th Hunger Games become the year with no Victor.

* * *

They are forced to stay in the Capitol for a strange, twisted party to celebrate the mad, mad girl.

That's the story that Snow wants the districts to believe. The girl was mad.

Effie drags Peeta off to talk to a sponsor, and that's when Snow touches Katniss on the back.

He asks her to dance a waltz with him. It's a first. Her heart pounds loudly in her ears with every step, with the way his hand rests on her waist, with every breath. She knew that he'd want to speak with her, but he's never forced her into a dance before, and she's paralyzed at his closeness, is able to see the blood that stains the creases in his lips, to feel his breath on her cheek.

Finnick is at her elbow as soon as the waltz is finished.

Snow kisses her hand, and Finnick pulls her into his chest. She curls her fingers into his sleeve, forcing herself to breathe. She'd prefer Peeta, but she's glad to have Finnick, who sweeps her easily into a dance, and she's able to swallow back the sob in her throat while Finnick holds her.

"What did he want?" Finnick asks.

She breathes in, breathes out. "He says that he knows that I must be eager to remind the districts how important it is to support the Capitol. There was this look in his eyes, Finnick. It wasn't like the times before when he's told me to do something, or to—when he's told me to have another baby."

"He's worried," Finnick breathes. "That girl's death isn't about to be ignored."

She nods. "But that's what he wants me to do," she whispers. "He wants me to distract them."

The dance is about to finish, and there's Peeta. Finnick twirls her before he brings her into his arms, and she doesn't as much hear the word as she feels his lips press it into her cheek. "Don't."

* * *

Johanna comes to Twelve for the Victory Tour, sitting on the porch with Katniss in the morning while the district prepares for the party. Ash takes to Johanna immediately, and it's funny to see her interact to him. Ash is in love, and Johanna is baffled at why he feels the need to talk to her, or to show her what he's drawn, or to ask her what she thinks about toads.

It's after Peeta's gone into town with the boys that Johanna takes a paper from her pocket.

She has a pen, too, and she starts to write.

Katniss opens her mouth to ask what Johanna is doing, but Johanna holds a finger up at her.

Finally, she allows Katniss to read what she's written: it's about District Thirteen, how it wasn't really destroyed, how a group in the Capitol is in communication with Thirteen, and there is talk about a revolution to overthrow Snow. The districts are ready for it. After what Katniss did, after what the tribute from Seven did. It's time to put an end to Snow, to the Capitol, to the Games.

It's time for things to change in Panem.

Katniss gapes at Johanna, who takes the paper back to write one more sentence at the bottom.

_Just thought you might like to know_.

From inside the house, Penny starts to cry, and Johanna pulls a lighter from her pocket, sets the paper on fire, and wipes the ashes into the dirt with her boot.

* * *

He writes the words into her palm. It's a way to talk that they developed years ago, knowing that the cameras in the Capitol couldn't see the letters that they traced. There aren't cameras in their house, but there are microphones, and this way they can't hear what Peeta says, what he suggests.

She glances at him. It's a risk, but he's right. It's time to take a risk. She nods.

He gives her a small, quiet smile in reply, squeezing her hand.

Before they leave for the Capitol, she'll take Prim into the woods, show her where the cabin is, and she'll talk to Madge, too, to Gale, to Bannock. They need to be prepared.

Peeta pats her leg before he starts to rise to his feet, and she knows he wants to use the morning to start on the cake for Posy's birthday. But she touches his arm to stop him, and he looks at her.

Impulsively, she kisses him. "I love you," she says.

His eyes widen, and he stares at her until she feels her cheeks flush. But he starts to smile, and her stomach flips at the look in his eyes. He steps in closer to her. "Do you realize that's the first time you've said that?" he asks. "In the ten years we've been married, you've never said it."

"It's the truth," she says. She knows that it shouldn't be.

She knows what love does to you, what it did to her mother. But she loves him.

The boys are with Madge, who is trying to teach them to play the piano, and Prim has the baby, which leaves the house empty. Peeta bakes the bread, and they sit cross-legged on the floor beside the fire; his hand trembles a little when he holds the bread to her lips. They are finished in minutes, but Katniss doesn't want to leave the floor, or the room, or that moment. Instead, she draws her knees to her chest, and he brushes a hand up her calf.

"Can I ask—when did it become real?"

She bites her lip. His eyes are soft, patient, and she reaches up to brush the hair back from his face. "I think — " She pauses. He catches her hand in his, kissing her fingers when they curl against his palm, and she knows. "I think it might have been real the whole time," she tells him.

* * *

The night before the Reaping, she isn't able to sleep, and it isn't nightmares that keep her awake.

She tries to assure herself that everything is going to work.

Finnick says that Heavensbee rigged the arena, allowing the revolution to start on camera for the world to see. The hovercrafts are going to rescue the Victors from the Capitol, taking them to Thirteen. Prim knows what to do in Twelve, and when. She'll keep the children safe, and Gale is going to lead those from the Seam to the woods while Bannock leads those from town.

It's going to work.

She manages to sleep for an hour before dawn.

But she wasn't wrong to worry that the careful, calculated plans were going to go awry. They do, and it starts at the Reaping: at fifteen years old, Posy Hawthorne is Reaped for the 85th Games.

* * *

Gale catches her before she climbs onto the train after Peeta. "You have to save her," he says.

"I know," she says. "I will." She meets his gaze. "I love her, too."

He nods, and she turns away, but he grabs her arm, turning her back to him, and the anger on his face seems to waver; she moves into his arms without a thought, and his embrace lifts her onto her toes. It's a moment from a lost, forgotten life: his smell, his warmth, his build, how it feels to hold him close. "I know, Catnip," he says, murmuring the words into her hair. "I know."

Posy is her sister, too, and she's going to save her.

There isn't a way to explain to Posy that there are plans in motion to make these Games the last. The cameras are ubiquitous now, and Katniss knows it's impossible to justify the risk. But she tries to prepare Posy: she coaches her to run as soon as the Games begin. Run, and find a place to hide. Don't worry about how you'll win. Take it a day at a time.

Run, and hide.

She draws Posy into a hug when she sees her off at the hovercraft.

It's easy for Katniss to hide her face from the camera in a hug, and breathes the words. "We're going to break into the arena to rescue the tributes. It's been the plan for months, and it means that we're going to rescue you, too. I swear to you, I'll get you out. Just run, and hide, and I'll come for you." She moves away, and Posy stares tearfully at her. "Like we talked about," Katniss says, speaking for the cameras. "Run, and hide."

"Run, and hide," Posy echoes, nodding. She clears her throat. "Got it."

She tries to smile before she turns away to walk to the hovercraft, and Katniss sways on her feet, reminding herself that she isn't allowed to chase after her, stop her, go into the arena for her.

* * *

She watches the screens obsessively, waiting for everything to spiral into disaster.

Except it doesn't.

Posy runs, and hides. Survives, and makes allies. The tributes from Four look after her. They are friends with Finnick, know know what's going to happen, and they team up with the tributes from Three. The escort in Three is with the rebellion, and she was able to rig the Reaping to allow Beetee to select the tributes. He trained them, trusts them, told them what to do in the arena.

They are children, but they are able to pull it off.

Lightning strikes the tree, and the revolution has started.

The plan is for the rebels under Heavensbee to commandeer three hovercrafts: one that'll go to the arena to rescue the tributes, one that'll go to Two to bomb the largest, most important ammunitions factory, and one that'll go to Four to pick up Annie before the Capitol reaches her.

Katniss is on the hovercraft to the arena, and Peeta is with her.

She has Posy in her arms as soon as the girl is lifted into the hovercraft. Her arm has start to bleed profusely from where her tracker was cut out, but Cecelia bandages the gash, and Peeta fetches her water, and Katniss explains that they are on their way to Thirteen. To her family. They are able to rescue the tributes from Three along with Posy, and the boy from Four, the tributes from Five, and the girl from Eleven, too, before the Capitol forces them to flee the arena.

They are the first to arrive safely in Thirteen.

Katniss bruises Peeta's hand with her grip when they step off the hovercraft.

But there's Prim with Rory, and Gale shouts for Posy, and Katniss gasps for relief: there's Ash, running to Katniss with Davey on his heels, and Pennycress toddles after them. Katniss sinks to her knees while she clutches Ash, and Davey piles in, hugging Katniss around the neck, and she rains kisses on them. Her boys. Alive, and in her arms. Her sweet, precious, _perfect_ boys. She rises to her feet at last to steal Penny from Peeta's arms. Her _baby_. Haymitch is behind the children, and he pulls Katniss into a hug, making Penny giggle when she's trapped between them.

"Glad you made it, Sweetheart," he says, swiping a kiss to her temple.

It doesn't seem real that it worked, that they survived, and they made it to Thirteen.

Peeta breathes in sharply, and Katniss follows his gaze to where Bannock stands at the elevator. His wife is with him; she hugs Katniss hesitantly while Bannock hugs Peeta. Katniss returns the hug with an affection for the woman that she didn't know she had. Mary smiles at Katniss when she draws away, but there's a look in her eyes that makes Katniss pause.

That's when Bannock explains.

Peeta's parents didn't make it. Neither did Rye, or his wife.

Pennycress is heavy in her arms, and Katniss is forced to realize who isn't there to greet them: her mother, Vick, Mrs. Hawthorne. Did they make it? Her heart leaps into her throat, and she looks around wildly for Madge. She isn't there, and Katniss tries to tell herself it doesn't mean anything. But why wouldn't Madge wouldn't come with the others to see Katniss arrive safely?

The hovercraft from Four arrives, and there's Finnick. He survived, and Annie is with him.

There's a child at her side.

She's a small, bony thing, hiding shyly behind Annie when people notice her. It takes Katniss a moment to understand, and she blinks wordlessly at Finnick when she does. "Nell," he says. "My daughter." His eyes are bright, matching the wide green eyes in Nell's brown, freckled face.

"How did you keep that a secret?" Peeta asks, gaping.

Finnick grins at them, but he isn't given the chance to explain before the hovercraft that bombed Two arrives, drowning them in noise. Johanna steps off, and she hugs Finnick while Prim sidles up to Katniss for a hug. Penny squirms, and Prim laughs when Penny pushes at her face, trying to push her away. She draws back, tickling Penny's foot. But she keeps an arm around Katniss's shoulders, and she is close, warm, _alive_.

Katniss starts to ask her about Madge.

But now that everyone's arrived, the soldiers from Thirteen are impatient suddenly to debrief them, and Katniss is dragged with Peeta through narrow, sterile halls to meet with President Coin. Her euphoria trickles away. Like it always has, like it always will.

They rescued Posy from the Games, and they made it to Thirteen.

Peeta is with her, and their children are safe.

This is what they wanted, but Katniss stares at Coin, and she knows the worst is yet to come.

* * *

The children pile into the bed with them that night. Davey wraps Katniss's arm around his waist while Pennycress tucks herself into Peeta's chest, and Ash settles between them, holding Katniss's hand where it rests on Davey's waist. His grip falls away in sleep, allowing her to stroke his hair absently, only for Peeta's hand to catch her wrist, and his thumb brushes her palm.

She isn't able to see him in the dark, but it doesn't matter.

He traces designs into her skin, and she doesn't know how to identify the feeling that tightens in her chest. But it makes her want to cry in a strange, needy way; she closes her eyes, and the world narrows into the circles that his thumb draws on her palm, making her curl unconsciously around Davey. The motion makes him turn in his sleep, and he burrows into her arms with a sigh.

She knows the feeling in her now: love for this boy, her baby. Her sweet, sweet baby.

Penny burps sleepily, and it makes Katniss smile.

Nothing's going to happen to them. To her boys, to their sister. To her babies, or to their father. She doesn't care about the war, or Thirteen. She's going to keep them in this bed with her forever.

* * *

In the morning, Katniss learns from Prim that their mother isn't dead. Neither is Madge.

Both are in what passes for a hospital in Thirteen.

Her mother is at work, although she manages to spare at hug for Katniss when she sees her. But it isn't her mother that Katniss is worried about. Her eyes find Madge immediately, lying in a bed with her back to Katniss. Prim says that Madge tried to save her parents, but she wasn't able to convince her mother to leave the bed, and her father refused to leave her mother. Madge would've died with them, but Gale dragged her to safety while the house collapsed around them.

According to Prim, she was hurt moments before they reached the door.

The glass in a window exploded with the heat, and Gale wasn't able to shield Madge from it completely: her temple took a blow, her cheek was cut badly, and she was blinded.

"Madge," Katniss says, rocking on her feet.

Madge turns towards Katniss. "You made it," she says, starting to smile. But her words are halting, hesitant. Like it's a question, and she's afraid to believe the answer.

"Peeta did, too," Katniss says, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, "and we got Posy." Madge nods. Her face is bandaged heavily, and her eyes are covered. It's quiet, making Katniss uncomfortable in a way that silences with Madge didn't use to. "I'm sorry about your parents."

"Me, too," Madge says.

Again, it's quiet.

Her chin starts to tremble, and Katniss reaches for her hand, squeezing it tightly when her face contorts with tears. She doesn't know what to say, or do, but Madge clutches her hand, mumbling that she's sorry, and Katniss doesn't know for what. "It's okay," she says. "Madge, Madge." She pulls Madge into her arms, feeling her eyes burn with tears at the way Madge sobs.

"My mother," Madge gasps, and Katniss holds her closer, tighter.

She wants to say that Madge hasn't lost her family completely yet. Not really. She hasn't lost Katniss yet, and Katniss is her family. But she doesn't know how to say that, and she hasn't seen Madge like this, has never known her to be anything other than strong, composed, and brave.

"I'm sorry," Katniss whispers, and Madge cries.

But it isn't long before she quiets, and she pulls away from Katniss. "I'm really, really glad you're okay," she says, trying to smile. "Peeta, too. I don't know what I'd do with you."

Katniss takes her hand. "Can I ask you what—what happened with Gale?" She has to ask.

Madge nods. "He came to look for me when I wasn't at the cabin," she says. "It was stupid, but I couldn't leave my parents. But he didn't listen to me. He stormed in, and picked me up, and _dragged_ me out, and he saved me." Her words are a whisper, and Katniss knows in that moment that there's a lot she hasn't been told about Madge, Gale, and their relationship.

It doesn't matter.

"I'm glad," Katniss says. "That he found you, and dragged you out, and saved you. I'm glad." She smiles, squeezing Madge's hand, and Madge smiles, too.

* * *

The rebels want Katniss to be a symbol that'll inspire the country, and she tries to do what they ask. Except she isn't an actor, and her efforts to inspire are dismal. Peeta is better, but Plutarch insists that it doesn't have the same impact when it comes from Peeta that it would from Katniss.

She tries, reading the scripts that they give her.

It comes off stilted, and she doesn't know how not to be.

But when she is taken to the hospital in Eight, she forgets to worry about the camera. She isn't expected to follow a script, or to strike a pose. She joins in the fight, and the words come to her naturally. _Fire is catching! Fire is catching, and if we burn, you burn with us_. She is the Mockingjay, inspiring Panem to join her in revolt against the Capitol, and Plutarch is thrilled.

* * *

Katniss hadn't thought was possible for a person to be as happy as Finnick is in Thirteen. But now that his family is safe from the Capitol, he seems to walk on air, and his smile is easy, constant, goofy, and _real_. His daughter is at his side constantly, and it's clear that he adores her.

It's impossible _not_ to adore her.

She's a sweet, chatty girl, and seems always to have shiny red scrapes on her scrawny little legs, knees, arms, and elbows; she displays them to Katniss proudly, making up stories to accompany them: a dragon that she woke accidentally, or pirates that chased her until she grew wings, and flew away. "I didn't know you had wings!" Katniss exclaims, and Nell giggles, spinning in a circle.

Finnick grins, and he swoops her up suddenly to hoist her into the air while she flaps her wings.

But Nell isn't with Finnick when he explains to the camera that he was sold in the Capitol.

For the first time since he arrived in Thirteen, he is without his smile. He talks in a soft, steady voice, describing everything that was done to him, the way that Snow controlled him, and he shares Snow's secrets, too, including that Snow poisoned himself in order to poison his enemies.

His secrets aren't news to Katniss, but speaks so calmly, so quietly, and it leaves her sad for him, and angry, too; the anger grows when Johanna explains that Snow killed her family, and Wiress describes the way that her brother was killed, and the abortion that Snow forced her to have. It grows until she burns with hatred, and she knows why Plutarch asked them to talk to the camera.

But she balks when Plutarch gestures at her to take a seat.

She doesn't have a story to share that'll remind Panem what a monster Snow is. They know her story; they saw it play out on TV. Except it isn't the Games that Plutarch wants her to talk about. He wants her to talk about the way that Snow threatened her after the Games, the way that he tried to control her. How he forced her to marry Peeta, and he forced her to have children.

"Isn't that what happened?" Plutarch asks.

"No," she says, shaking her head. "He threatened to kill my family unless I did whatever he told me to, yes," she says, "but it wasn't like —" She falters. Her eyes dart to where Finnick sits with Johanna, and to Haymitch, to Wiress. She wants to say that it wasn't like _what happened to them_. She wasn't raped, or prostituted. Her family wasn't hurt. But the words stick in her throat.

"I was under the impression that Snow told you to marry Peeta," Plutarch says, frowning, and he glances at Peeta. But Peeta is quiet; in fact, everyone is quiet, waiting for her Katniss to answer.

"He did," Katniss says.

Plutarch stares at her. "Right. He forced you to marry, and to have children. Do you realize how terrible that is? He _forced_ you into a marriage against your will, and _demanded_ that you consummate that marriage," Plutarch says, and anger flares in her gut. "He _demanded_ that you have children for _his_ purposes," he continues, "and you didn't—"

"I'm not doing it," she snaps, and it starts him into silence. "I'm not talking about my children on camera. Or my marriage. I'm not." She pauses, trying to reel her anger in. "I have done everything you've asked. Or I've tried to. But I'm not doing this." She glares at him. "I'm not." She isn't going to equate her marriage with rape, isn't going to imply that her children were _forced_ on her, were born to control her, or to punish her.

Plutarch sighs. "I see," he says. "Well, let's discuss it at another time."

She wants to snarl that they _won't_ discuss it at another time, but he has already turned to talk to Seeder, and she knows there isn't a point. He'll bring it up tomorrow, and she'll refuse tomorrow.

Peeta touches a hand to her back, and she glances at him, feeling her anger dissipate when he smiles faintly at her, and there's a sad, uncomfortable knowing in his eyes.

She isn't able to sleep that night.

In a way, Plutarch is right: it _would_ be terrible to be forced into a marriage with a stranger, or some cruel, wealthy man from the Capitol. But Katniss wasn't forced to marry some cruel, wealthy man from the Capitol. She wasn't forced to marry a man who raped her, or beat her. She wasn't forced to have a baby with a man who raped her, or beat her.

She was forced to marry Peeta, and it wasn't terrible.

That's the problem.

The rebels want it to have been terrible. They want Panem to remember when Katniss decided to defy the Capitol in the Games, and they don't want people to think it was for love. That was what the Capitol wanted, and the rebels want the opposite: they want Katniss to declare that it wasn't about love. That her marriage was a farce, and her children were a demand.

That she didn't love Peeta.

They aren't wrong. She didn't love Peeta when she was in the Games. She didn't know him, and she was a child, and it wasn't foolish, overwhelming love that motived her to do what she did.

But she loves him now. She loves him, and it makes her sick to think that he is supposed to be a cruelty that was done to her, that their marriage is supposed to be something unfair, something wrong, something that'll inspire anger in people, making them hate the Capitol.

The lights that are supposed to signify day haven't come on yet when Katniss slips from the bed, but she isn't going to be able to sleep for the hour until they do, and she wants a shower.

Peeta is shaving at the sink when she steps from the tub, and he smiles at her reflection in the mirror. She towels off, wrapping the towel around herself before she reaches up to braid her hair. It isn't until she's tied off the braid that he touches a hand to her hip; his arms circle her waist, and she leans into his chest, sighing at his kiss to her temple, and she finds his gaze in the mirror.

His fingers curl in her towel, and she turns her head to kiss him.

He backs her towards the wall slowly, pulling off her towel, and his hands brush her thighs.

It surprises her when he turns her suddenly, and he crowds her against the wall, lifts her arms up to flatten her palms against the wall above her. He's rough, digging his fingers into her hips, squeezing her breast, stealing her breath when he pushes into her suddenly from behind. He fucks her in a greedy, possessive way, and she's boneless when he's finished.

Before she can turn to face him, he starts to talk.

"If we hadn't been in the Games, I would've found a way to be your friend," he says, breathing heavily against her cheek. "It might've taken a year, or two, or ten. But I'd have found a way, and I would've waited for you. No matter how long it took, I'd have waited for you." He presses his nose to her cheek, and she turns slowly in his arms, taking his face in her hands to look at him.

She waits for him to open his eyes, and she brushes her thumbs gently against his cheeks.

"I know," she says, hoping that he's able to hear the truth in her voice, that he's able to hear everything that she doesn't know how to say. But she knows he does. He always does. He kisses her palm, and she knows what to say when Plutarch asks her to share her story with the camera. She takes a seat in front of the camera, surprising him when she doesn't try to refuse.

She talks about the way that Snow forced a marriage on them, and demanded a baby from them.

But she doesn't stop at that.

If the rebels want her to tell everyone the truth, she'll tell everyone the truth.

"I love Peeta," she says. "If I'd had a choice, I would've chosen to marry him. I _should've_ had a choice. I should've been allowed to fall in love on my terms, and we should've been allowed to choose when we wanted to marry, and why. But they took that from us. They _stole_ that from us."

Her throat constricts with anger, and the room is quiet when they turn the camera off at last.

"That was good," Plutarch says, nodding. "That was good." He gives her the rest of the day off.

* * *

Katniss visits Madge in the hospital, only to be pulled to the side when Prim spots her, and Prim spills the news in a rush, beaming at Katniss with big, bright eyes. She is pregnant. In eight months, she is going to have a baby. She is going to be a mother.

Katniss is stunned, gaping at Prim.

It seems impossible that her sister could have a baby when she _is_ a baby, and Katniss has to remind herself that Prim is older than Katniss gives her credit for: she is older than Katniss was when Ash was born, than Katniss was when _Davey_ was born.

It doesn't seem to matter to Prim that they're in a war.

"It isn't like we planned it," Prim says. "But you know how impossible it is to get contraception here, and, well." She shrugs, and her cheeks are flushed with excitement. Katniss smiles, pulling her into a hug, and tries to be excited for her.

But they're in a war.

If Katniss had known that her sister needed contraception, she would've tried to talk to Coin. She hadn't realized that contraception was a problem in Thirteen: as soon as she arrived, the doctors gave her a shot to prevent pregnancy, and they give her one monthly now at her request.

It turns out that Katniss is an exception to the rule.

Prim is pregnant, and it isn't a week before Katniss learns that Bannock's wife, Mary, is, too.

"I'd started to think you didn't want kids," Peeta says, smiling.

Bannock shrugs. "Never seemed like the timing was right," he says. But when Peeta leaves to see what it is that Davey needs to show him _right_ _now_, _Papa!_, Bannock admits that he _didn't_ want kids. Only Katniss is in the room with him, and he says the admission softly, carefully, surprising her. "I like kids. I do. But I couldn't bring myself to—" He pauses. "Do you know that I was responsible for Peeta when he was little?" he asks.

She blinks, shaking her head.

He nods. "Our father was busy with the bakery, and our mother wasn't interested in a boy; he wasn't what she'd hoped for, and, well, I was six, and that meant that the baby was my responsibility. I had to wake him in the morning, put him to bed at night, quiet him when he cried. He started at school, and I had to keep an eye on him. It wasn't hard; he was a good kid. He was—he was _my_ kid. But when he was Reaped, there was nothing I could—I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what to do, or—or what to say. It wasn't until after they took him that I thought of a hundred things that I wanted to say to him. That I _should've_ said to him. Then he came back after _nobody_ thought he would, and I didn't know how to say all that stuff that I swore I'd give anything to be able to say." His gaze is on his knees. "Never have been able to."

It's quiet.

"He knows," Katniss says.

He glances at her, and the look on his face in that moment, the crinkle around his eyes, the smile that tugs sadly at his mouth: it makes him look strikingly like Peeta. "She's wanted a baby for years," he says. "But I couldn't have one." He sighs. "Not after Peeta. I guess the world's supposed to be safer now, though. Or it will be soon. There's nothing to worry about now." He raises his eyebrows at her, daring her to try to reassure him that there _is_ nothing to worry about.

But she doesn't have a chance to reply before Peeta returns, and Bannock changes the subject.

* * *

Coin agrees to allow Katniss to join a mission to Three. It isn't going to be dangerous, or that's what Plutarch says. He is eager to film Katniss "in action," and a trip to Three to deliver ammunition is perfect. Peeta is going to come, too, along with Finnick, Johanna, and Blight.

"Do you have to go?" Ash asks.

She is surprised at the question. She hadn't realized that Ash heard her mention the mission to Finnick, and she is at a loss for what to say for a moment.

In a way, she's lucky that she's the Mockingjay. It means that Coin refuses to risk her life, and Katniss isn't allowed to go into combat. Neither is Peeta. Instead, they stay in Thirteen with their family, posting for the camera in safety. It isn't a task that Katniss relishes, but she knows that it's important, and she knows that she isn't a solider. That she's lucky not to be in combat.

But she has to go to Three.

Her job is to pose for the camera, and she isn't able to do that properly in Thirteen. Not really. Besides, she might be able to help in Three. She was able to help in Eight.

"I do," she says, squatting to explain.

He doesn't give her a chance. "Why?" he asks, glaring. But his glare is softened with desperation that he isn't able to disguise, and it makes her breath catch when he declares suddenly, desperately, "you're _always_ leaving." He tugs at his shirt, looking at her with big, impossibly blue eyes. "What happens when you don't come back?" he asks.

"Little Goose," she says.

Haymitch used to have geese, and they'd honk madly without reason. Ash liked to honk back at them when he was little, and it made her smile, listening to him. To her little goose.

His stare doesn't waver. "What happens when you don't come back?"

She knows that she's supposed to say that she'll always come back. She _wants_ to say that she'll always come back. But Ash isn't a baby. He is young, but he hasn't been a baby for years. "This isn't a big, dangerous mission," she says. "I'll come back." She pauses. "But if I go on a mission some day, and I don't come back, you have to look after your siblings. It's a really, really big job, being a big brother. If I don't come back one day, it'll be an even bigger, even more important job."

"Can't you just not go?" he asks. "Just stay here."

"I have to go," she says. "I'm sorry. I know you don't want me to, and I don't want to either. I have to, though. I know that you're safe in Thirteen, but there are kids who aren't in Thirteen, and who aren't safe, and I have to try to help them. But you'll look after your siblings no matter what, right?" She waits for him to look at her.

"Yes," he says.

"Good." She smiles, but his eyes have dropped to the floor. "That makes me feel a lot better to know." She brushes her fingers through his hair.

He surges forward suddenly to hug her, and she pulls him in as close as she can. "I love you," he says, mumbling the words into her neck, and she makes a promise to herself in that moment: she'll always come back.

* * *

Finnick's wedding is that night. It's a loud, lavish affair with drinking, dancing, and a cake that Peeta bakes, and Katniss is tipsy before the evening's over.

Mostly, she dances with Peeta. But she dances with Haymitch, too, and at one point Finnick drags her into a long, ridiculously complicated waltz. She is flushed, breathless, and laughing when the song draws to a close at last, and Finnick pulls her in to kiss her sloppily on the cheek.

For a night, they are allowed to forget the war, and they do.

Johanna dances with Ash, and Peeta dances with Annie, and Rory dances with Madge.

"Aunty!" Nell cries, skipping towards Katniss. There is a silky blue ribbon in her hair to match her silky blue dress. "Look at my dress!" She twirls, making the dress flare out at her knees.

"It's beautiful," Katniss says, smiling.

But before Nell is able to reply, Peeta gasps. "_Nell_?" he says, amazed. "Nell, it's _you_!" His eyes are wide. "I thought when I saw you across the room that—don't tell anyone, but I thought a _fairy_ had come to the wedding!" He says the word at a whisper, and Nell is thrilled, curtsying for him before she races off to tell everyone that she was mistaken for a fairy. Peeta grins after her.

Katniss watches him, and she can't help but kiss him.

He makes her laugh when he breaks the kiss suddenly to twirl her.

Eventually, Prim takes Pennycress to bed, and Katniss finds the boys are with Haymitch; Ash is sleeping on the ground with Haymitch's coat balled up under his head, and Davey is in Haymitch's lap, nodding off. "Can you put them to bed?" Katniss asks, grinning, and Haymitch grunts at her.

She leaves the boys with him, and returns to Peeta.

But it isn't long before she is ready for bed, too. She leans heavily into Peeta while they sway to the music. "I don't want it to be tomorrow," she says, closing her eyes.

He leans down to press a kiss to her head. "It won't last for much longer," he murmurs. "The Capitol isn't going to be able to hold out for much longer."

She tilts her head up to look at him. "Do you really believe that?" He nods, and his eyes are soft, sober. Filled with a fondness that makes her smile inadvertently. "I love you," she says.

He smiles. "I love you, too."

She kisses his chest, closing her eyes while the songs plays softly to a close, and the night is over.

* * *

She's about to finish with Penny's hair when everything seems suddenly to _shake_ around them.

But as quickly at it started, it stops, and the room is still.

Penny looks around the room curiously before she looks up at Katniss. "What was that?"

Katniss frowns, tying off the braid quickly. She pats Penny on the shoulder to signal that she's finished, and the ground rocks under their feet. Something's wrong. She grabs Penny's hand, starting for the door a moment before an alarm blares suddenly through the room. The room shakes violently, and Penny stumbles into Katniss while plaster rains suddenly from the ceiling.

"_Mama_!"

She scoops Penny up, turning quickly to shield her from the impact when the dresser crashes into the ground.

In the hallway, people are running wildly, and the alarm blares loudly from everywhere at once.

She isn't give the chance to decide where to go before Peeta is at her side, taking Penny from her arms, explaining that they are under attack, and they have to get to safety in the bunkers before this floor collapses under the bombs. "Bannock has Ash, and they should've made it under by now," he says. She is about to ask him where Davey is, but his eyes widen, and she realizes that _he_ was about to ask where Davey is. Her stomach flips in horror. He's in the hospital with Prim.

They could've made safely it to the bunker already.

Or they might be trapped in the hospital.

"Take Penny," Peeta says, shouting to be heard. "I'll go. I'll find them. Get to the bunker."

But she is faster than he is. She'd get to the hospital quicker, get Davey to the bunker quicker.

If the corridors are destroyed from the bombs, she'll be quicker on her feet, quicker to jump, or to drop to the ground. She knows that, and she doesn't have to say it; he knows it, too. He opens his mouth to protest, and she kisses him quickly, shoving lightly at his chest. "I'll meet you in the bunker," she says, and she ignores the protest in his eyes, sprinting down the hallway before he's able to stop her.

She has to get to the hospital.

She makes it to the stairs before she is knocked off her feet, and her ankle twists under her.

But she is up in an instant, and she is on the floor, is going to be at the hospital in under a minute.

She ducks when the ceiling in the corridor starts to crumble, steadies herself against the wall when she takes a hit to the shoulder that leaves her dizzy for a moment. She is able to see the doors to the hospital when there's a scream. It's a child. She looks around wildly, but the corridor is blurry with heat, and the ceiling that rains onto her back. "Where are you?" she yells, turning in a circle.

Her eyes land on Nell a moment before the girl crashes into her with a sob, wrapping scraped, scrawny arms around her waist.

She tries to pick her up, but an explosion rocks the hallway, deafening her, and everything seems to happen slowly, yet everything happens at once: an explosion in front that blasts them with heat, searing her skin, an explosion from behind that knocks her to her knees, and pain cuts into her back like a knife, but she gathers Nell into her arms, trying to cover her, and she looks up, sees an explosion above them; the ceiling seems to rush for her, and she curls blindly around Nell.

* * *

She comes to slowly, sweating in her sheets. She blinks, only to wince at the pain that stabs her back. She blinks, and stares at the canvas above her. Blinks, and sweat prickles on her neck. Blinks, and it hurt to move. Her skin tears, and it burns. She blinks, and a hand stokes her hair.

"Aunty, are you awake?" Hot, wet breath is on her cheek. "Aunty?" Nell asks.

She blinks, and there's Nell, stroking her hair. She has a nasty yellow, starburst bruise on her chin, but it doesn't like she's hurt badly, and Katniss swallows dryly, managing to smile at her. "Hey, Nell," she says, and Nell beams at her. But when Katniss tries to sit up, the pain leaves her dizzy.

She blinks away the dots that pepper her vision. There is a hand on her cheek, on her shoulder, and she blinks, looking into a round, mousy face. "Mary," she says.

"I'm here," Mary replies, smiling.

Katniss doesn't know where _here_ is.

But the memories have started to flood her, and it makes panic crawl up into her throat, choking her: bombs, her baby, Peeta, running, Nell, the ceiling, and a face above her, and smoke, and she was lifted, and she doesn't know whether these are nightmares that she's remembered, or things that happened to her after she blacked out.

She doesn't know how much time has passed, or where she is now. It doesn't matter.

Where's Peeta? Did he make it to the bunkers with Pennycress?

Did Bannock make it with Ash? Did Prim take Davey to the bunkers? What about Madge?

"The Capitol bombed Thirteen," Mary says.

"I remember," Katniss breathes. "Peeta took Penny to the bunkers, and I went to the hospital to get to Davey, but I didn't—I found Nell, and—" She coughs, and Mary holds a glass to her lips suddenly, helping her to drink the water. It burns down her throat, but she is desperate for more.

"Sammy found you," Mary says.

Katniss frowns.

"Cartwright. Sammy Cartwright. He found you with Nell, and he got you to safety. He got you to a doctor. Katniss, you were—your legs were broken, and your shoulder was dislocated, and you had six broken ribs. Sammy says that the doctor set your legs, and fixed your shoulder, and he bandaged you a little, but he wanted to try to find others in the rubble. He left, and he didn't—Sammy says that he must've been killed when the bombs started up again that night."

"Oh."

How could she have survived? The hallway _collapsed_ on her.

"But what about Peeta?" she asks. "Or Bannock? My kids? Did they make it to the bunkers? Where are they?" She tries to look around the room, but it hurts to move, hurts to crane her neck.

"I don't know," Mary says.

"What don't you know?' Katniss asks.

"I don't know whether they made it to the bunker," Mary says. "I don't know where they are, or whether they survived. I'm sorry, Katniss. I don't know for certain, but I don't think—" Tears pool in her eyes. "I don't know. But they aren't here, and—I'm sorry, Katniss. I'm sorry."

Katniss blinks.

She breathes in, breathes out. It hurts to breathe.

Mary reaches for her hand, and she explains what she knows. The bombs dropped for hours, but they stopped eventually, and people found Mary, hiding in the ruins; she hadn't made it to the bunkers. She was taken to safety before the Capitol renewed their attack. The Capitol destroyed Thirteen, but Sammy claims that Thirteen destroyed the Capitol.

Coin ordered a retaliation immediately, and the Capitol was bombed. _If we burn, you burn with us_.

That was the last that anybody heard from Coin.

They assume that she was killed along with everybody who hadn't escaped Thirteen yet.

But they don't know for certain. The small, injured group that made it from Thirteen hid in the woods that separate Thirteen from Twelve, and they were in hiding for days. They were cut off from the world, couldn't hear anything other than static on the radio, weren't able to communicate with anybody. It wasn't until they ran into a group from Eleven that they learned how the rebels in the districts gave the computers a virus. "I don't know what that means," Mary says. "But a man from Eleven told Sammy that the scientists in Three put a virus in a computer, and it was worse than the bombs. It turned off the electricity, and it made hovercrafts plummet from the sky, and it shut everything down. It—it destroyed the Capitol."

But if Snow was killed in the chaos, she doesn't know.

She doesn't know who is in charge in the Capitol, or that anybody is. She doesn't know who is in charge among the rebels, or that anybody is. She doesn't know what remains of the Capitol, or of the districts. She listens to the radio, but there is nothing to hear. Their group in the woods is small, living off supplies that were scavenged from empty, abandoned houses in Eleven. They are short on food. They don't know how to communicate with others who might've survived the bombs, or the virus, or the horrors they don't yet know about. They don't know what to do now.

_If we burn, you burn with us_. She'd meant that when she said it.

But she hadn't thought it would really happen. She hadn't thought the world would really burn.

She tries to sit up, wants to talk to Sammy for herself. But the effort makes her faint with pain, and she breathes in sharply, blinking away the tears that have gathered in her eyes. Mary squeezes her hand. "The doctor saved your life, but it'll be a while before you're healed completely," she says. "I don't know how much you're able to feel, but you were burned. Badly."

Katniss knows that she's bandaged heavily. Her skin is itchy, burning under hot, heavy bandages that paper her legs, her back, her arms, her neck. She doesn't care that she's bandaged, or burned.

She has to go to Thirteen.

But it hurts to turn her head to look at Mary properly, and the pain makes her dizzy, makes her faint with sudden, overwhelming exhaustion. "Sleep," Mary says, and Katniss isn't able not to.

* * *

Her mind works feverishly in the moments that she's awake, trying to find a way to save them.

Days pass, and she is able to think properly for longer, more certain stretches.

It sounds like the survivors are those who didn't make it to the bunkers, and were forced to hide in the woods away from Thirteen to escape the bombs.

But that means that those who made it to the bunkers might've survived, too. They might've stayed in the bunkers until the bombers were finished. Peeta might've made it to the bunkers, might've survived, and he didn't know where to look for Katniss after the bombs stopped. He might've survived, and their children might've survived. She has to return to Thirteen, and soon.

The hope mixes with her anxiety, and it leaves a heavy, awful feeling in her stomach that rises like smoke, coating her throat in a taste that makes her sick.

_Just one_, she thinks. _Give me one. Let one have survived._ But which one would she choose? Her sweet little baby girl? Loud, dark-haired Ash? Shy, yellow-haired Davey? Or _Peeta_? Or Prim? What about Madge? Posy? Finnick? _Just one_, she thinks. But she wants them all. _Needs_ them all.

She _begs_ for them all, telling herself it's possible until the pain from her raw, ruined skin becomes unbearable, and she passes out, sinking into nightmares in which everyone she loves is burning, screaming, _drying_, crushed under the ceiling that should've killed her.

* * *

It takes her months to recover completely, but she does. Slowly, she isn't dizzy at the smallest, slightest movement, and Nell keeps her company for hours. She strokes Katniss's hair, sings her silly little rhymes that Finnick loved. Slowly, Katniss is able to sit up, to turn in the bed, to move her arms, and Mary doesn't have to hold the water to her lips for her. Slowly, her ribs heal, and her burns start to scab, and she is able to leave the bed. She is able to walk.

She has to go to Thirteen.

Mary warns her that the ruins are toxic. "Stay for long, and it'll burn your lungs out," she says.

It's clear that Mary doesn't want her to go, but Sammy offers to go with her, and they leave as soon as Katniss is able. She likes Sammy, and she tries not to think about his sister when she looks at his round, boyish face. But Delly could've survived. She could've made it to the bunkers.

Everyone could've. It doesn't have to be just one. It could be that everyone made it to the bunkers, and everyone survived.

They have to walk for days, stopping to rest for longer than Katniss likes.

But they reach what used to be Thirteen at last: a gray, ruined cavity in the ground.

She ignores that awful, acidic smell that rises from the rubble, climbing into the ruins, and Sammy follows her wordlessly. They stumble across body after body, but Katniss can't bring herself to look at them, and she knows there isn't a point: the sun has rotted away their faces. She didn't come to find their bodies. She came to find the bunkers, and she refuses to give up until she does.

Three days, they search the ruins.

Until her hands are cramped, sliced, and bloody, and she is dizzy, dehydrated, struggling to stay on her feet despite the pain from her sore, healing ribs, and the way her scabs prickle uncomfortably at the sweat that soaks her bandages. Until she is forced to acknowledge the truth.

There's nothing for her to find in the ruins.

If she could've found a way into the bunkers, they could've found a way out.

But after three days, it's clear there isn't a way in, and she knows there wasn't a way out. Either the bombs trapped everyone in the bunkers, leaving them to rot under the ruins, or the bombs destroyed the bunkers, killing everyone instantly. It doesn't matter which. In the end, everyone died. Except Katniss. It would take a miracle for somebody to survive, and that was given to her.

She survived.

She hugs her middle, and her raw, ruined skin stings sharply at the movement, reminding her that she _survived_. She ran from the bunkers, didn't care about herself, was _crushed_ under the ceiling, but her ribs are sore to touch, and every breath she takes makes her lungs burn, and she _survived._

It shouldn't have been her. But it was. It is. She survived, and that's what she's left with. Herself.

* * *

The voices pull her from sleep, making her blink groggily at the wall. Her head is sore from sleep, but she closes her eyes, ignoring the noise that woke her, and tries to drift back to sleep.

"Are you going to eat that?" Nell asks, jostling Katniss on the cot. "Aunty, wake up." Tiredly, Katniss turns to look at her, but Nell's eyes are on the food that Mary left beside the cot: an apple next to what looks like lumpy soup, or watery porridge. "Are you going to eat your apple?"

It takes a moment for the words to register. "Have it," Katniss says, managing a smile.

Nell beams, swooping down to kiss Katniss wetly on the cheek before she grabs the apple. But she doesn't run off with it like Katniss expected her to. Instead, she cross her legs on the bed, learning into Katniss's hip while she bites into the apple carefully, licking her lips after every bite.

Katniss stares at her.

Her arms are sticks, and her hair hangs in matted, unwashed clumps around her face.

"It's nice to see you up," Mary says, approaching with a smile.

Mary is heavy with child, yet her bones protrude from her body, moving visibly under her skin. Katniss stares at her, and she knows that Mary is starving, and Nell is, too. They've lived on soft, bruised apples, and hard, unripe berries for months. On mealy potatoes, and soup that tastes like roots, onions, and grass in water, and Katniss hadn't noticed until now, staring at them.

It's been months since she returned from the ruins in Thirteen. Months, and she's spent them in her sweat-soaked, blood-stained cot while Finnick's daughter starved, and Bannock's wife struggled to care for her, and for Katniss, and for the child in her belly. Peeta's nephew, or niece.

It takes a while to make the arrows, and longer to make a bow that'll work properly with them.

But she leaves the camp to wander into the still, quiet woods at last, and her body remembers quickly what her mind has forgotten: how to string a bow, how to shoot an arrow, how to hit a skinny brown squirrel right between the eyes.

* * *

There are days when she isn't able to leave her cot, but there are days when she needs to. She needs to hunt, to look after Nell. She needs to learn how to live, and she does.

Mostly, the survivors from Thirteen are strangers to Katniss. But they are a small, kind group, numbering under fifty, and she learns their names, shares her game with them, knows that she owes them her life, and she owes them Nell's life.

Together, the group decides to abandon their small, make-shift camp in the woods before winter settles in, passing barren, bombed land for days before they stumble at last onto empty, forgotten cabins. The cabins are stocked with what they'll need to survive the winter, and they move in gratefully. But winter isn't harsh, and spring arrives before Mary goes into labor.

"I can't, I can't," Mary sobs. But she has to, and Katniss takes her hand, promising her that she'll be able to do this without Bannock. That she isn't alone.

The baby is a small, red-faced boy, screaming loudly at the world before Katniss gives him to his mother. But a contraction grips Mary suddenly, and Katniss takes the baby from her before the reason he was born a month early becomes clear: seven minutes after he is born, his sister is born.

Twins. Katniss is stunned, laughing tearfully with Mary while Sammy gapes at them.

It isn't until later that she allows the sobs to wrack her, and she remembers the way they fit into her arms when they were born, how they smelled, giggles on her neck, a knee wedged into her back, fingers curled in her braid, and "Mama, Mama, did you know that Papa has a _pretend_ leg?!"

She curls up in the bed, and her sobs carry her into sleep.

But she wakes to crying that Mary isn't able to quiet, and she takes the baby from Mary, rocks him while Mary nurses his sister. Morning comes, and Katniss leaves to hunt, returning in the afternoon to a warm, milk-scented cabin. Mary has settled on names for the twins: George for her son, and Lettie for her daughter.

Days pass, and there isn't time to stay in bed when there are twins to care for.

Summer brings awful, overwhelming humidity, and Sammy leaves to explore. "There have to be people out there who survived the war," he says. She doesn't try to argue with him, but she doesn't see the point. If there are people out there who survived the war, what does that matter?

The people they love didn't survive. She tries to think who might be left to find. There's Cinna, and Effie. Neither escaped the Capitol when the rebellion started, and they might've survived.

But she doubts it, and it isn't like Sammy knew them.

"You aren't going to leave, right?" Nell asks.

"Not without you," Katniss says, and Nell gives her a sweet, shy smile.

She takes Nell to the lake for a bath, and Nell is delighted to be in the water, swimming in circles around Katniss, chattering about the ocean at home in Four, squirming with boredom while Katniss washes her long, tangled hair. She is like she was before the attack on Thirteen. "Do you want a kiss from a fish?" she asks, and she puckers her lips, giving Katniss a loud, smacking kiss from a fish before she dissolves into giggles.

Katniss crosses her eyes at Nell in reply, which makes Nell giggle in earnest.

She cuts Nell's hair, and braids it neatly.

Her gaze catches on her reflection in the water, and the face that stares at her is unrecognizable: short, choppy black hair that hasn't grown past her ears yet, and pink, melted skin that fans across her cheek, curling around her neck to disappear beneath the water. But it doesn't matter.

Nell swims off, shattering the reflection, and Katniss starts to scrub the grim off her skin.

"Aunty, look!" Nell shouts. "Aunt Katniss! I know how to do a cartwheel! Look, look! Watch!" She springs easily into a handstand, cartwheeling across the lake. "Did you see? Did you see?" she asks breathlessly, beaming at Katniss, and Katniss promises that she saw, and it was amazing.

Two days later, and it's been a year since the Capitol bombed Thirteen. She doesn't leave bed that day. She can't.

* * *

She knows that she shouldn't, but she thinks a lot about what might've happened.

On her worst days, she wishes there hadn't been a rebellion.

She knows that Posy would've died in the Games. Eventually, Davey would've, too. Or Ash, or their sister. But she thinks it would've been Davey. Her shy, sweet boy with yellow curls and dimples in his cheeks. If there hadn't been a rebellion, Davey would've been killed in the Games.

But there was a rebellion, and Davey was killed. Ash was killed, and Pennycress was killed.

She looks at George, sleeping in her arms. Peeta's nephew. He'll never know what the Games are. He'll never have to fear that he'll be Reaped, or that his sister will.

If it would bring her children back to life, would she take that away from him?

It doesn't matter. She can't bring them back to life. There was a rebellion, and she lost everything that she had to lose. The children she hadn't wanted, the husband she hadn't chosen.

It might've been worth it. For George, and his sister. For Nell. They deserve to live in a world without the Games, without the Capitol, and Katniss won't take that world away from them. But she wishes she didn't have to live in that world.

She wishes that she could've stayed with Peeta.

That she could've hugged him in that corridor in Thirteen, refusing to let go, and died with him before she had to know what it was like to live without him.

* * *

The leaves start to change, and Katniss spots a deer in the woods. It's a week before she spots it again, but she is ready this time, and she hits it square between the eyes.

She plans to make jerky with the meat, and it'll last them for months.

"Did you hear that?" Mary asks, frowning.

Katniss glances at her. "What?" She didn't hear a thing, especially not in the static on the radio. Mary listens to the static constantly, spinning the dial on the radio day after day in hopes that she'll stumble onto a station that isn't static.

"I thought I heard something," Mary says.

But her gaze is on the radio, and she doesn't seem to expect a response from Katniss. She turns the dial slowly, and Katniss continues to skin the deer, trying to decide what she'll do with the hide. She thinks it would make a good, warm blanket for the twins. Or a coat for Nell.

The static disappears abruptly, and Katniss gapes at Mary, at the radio, at the voice that floods the cabin, speaking calmly about the need to form a community to rebuild the country.

"Is that—?" Mary starts.

"_Madge_," Katniss breathes.

Madge is on the radio, talking about how it is time to join in community to bury our dead, to feed our children, and to create a government that is just, fair, and good. But Katniss isn't really able to process what it is that Madge says, only that it is _Madge_, and she gasps when a voice responds to Madge.

Gale.

Gale is on the radio.

But they were in Thirteen. They were caught in the chaos when the bombs were dropped. They couldn't have survived. Except they did.

Mary claps a hand to her mouth, glancing at Katniss with tears in her eyes.

If they survived, others could've. If Madge made it to safety from the hospital in Thirteen, Prim could've. Davey could've. Did they hide in the bunkers? Was it wrong for her to assume that those in the bunkers were killed despite the safety the bunkers were supposed to provide them?

Mary spins up the volume on the radio, and Madge's voice pours into their small, stuffy cabin, washing over them until Katniss is dizzy with the sound. If Madge survived, others could've. Her children could've. _Peeta_ could've, and hope reaches into her chest like a fist, tightening around her lungs until she isn't able to breathe.

* * *

She takes her family on the road with her: Mary, the twins, Nell. She isn't going to lose them.

They are what she knows for certain she has left in the world.

Mary pushes the twins in the rusted old stroller that Sammy fixed up for them before he left, and Katniss carries their supplies in a pack on her back: they have food to feed them for a week, a blanket, a knife, a flashlight, and bottles for water. They don't really know where to go, but they decide to follow the tracks for trains that haven't run in years. Eventually, the tracks are going to lead them into the Capitol, and that's where Madge is.

It's a place to start.

Four hours on the road, and Nell starts to drag her feet, and the babies start to fuss, and Katniss agrees to stop for a break.

"Are we going to be there soon?" Nell asks, taking the food that Mary gives her. She frowns, and she tilts her head at Katniss. "Where is _there_, Aunty?" she asks.

"Hush," Katniss says. "Eat your pears."

It's quiet. The radio buzzes next to Mary while she nurses George.

The sun reflects off the tracks beside Nell, stinging Katniss's eyes when she looks at them.

She remembers when she kissed him on the train.

He asked her why, and she didn't have an answer for him.

But she knows now what the answer is, and she wishes she could've told him: it was a kiss for how much I love you. For how much I need you, and don't want to lose you. For how you bring out the best in me, and you love the worst in me, and I don't know what I would do if ever I lost you.

He told her once that his nightmares were about losing her. He was okay when he realized that she was there. _I'm coming_, she thinks.

Nell burps loudly in boredom, which makes Mary tut at her, and Katniss shakes her head to shake away the memories. "Turn up the volume," she says, nodding at the radio.

Mary spins the dial, and Gale's voice floods the air.

"I know things seems impossible right now," he says, "but we can't give up yet. If you don't have the strength to do it for yourself, find the strength to do it for somebody you love." His words are clear, strong, and eloquent, and they sound like something that Peeta could've written.

He might've.

The thought strikes Katniss suddenly.

He could've written those words, could be in the Capitol right now with their children. Or he could be on the road, searching for her. _He could've survived_. She knows better than to hope for that, to hope for everything. But she finishes off her jerky, and she rises to her feet. "Come on," she says, taking Nell's hand. "We've got a ways to go."

**tbc.**

* * *

_Light up, light up,_  
_ As if you have a choice._  
_ Even if you cannot hear my voice,_  
_ I'll be right beside you, dear._


	2. Chapter 2

a/n: I didn't plan on writing a second part to this, but I was overwhelmed with the number of people who wanted me to. One review suggested a sequel from Peeta's POV that starts when Katniss runs from him during the bombing, and that's what I decided to do. I hope it lives up to everyone's expectations! Just to warn you, the vast majority of this was written before the movie came out, and I couldn't bear to go back and change the descriptions of Thirteen based on the movie. I'm sorry! :)

* * *

"Take Penny," Peeta says, shouting to be heard. "I'll go. I'll find them. Get to the bunker."

But he knows as soon as the words leave his mouth that she isn't going to listen to him, and she shouldn't. She is better on her feet than he is; she was before he lost his leg, and his agility certainly hasn't improved now that he's short a leg. If the corridors are destroyed from the bombs, she'll be able to navigate the destruction in a way he won't. It makes sense for her to go.

Except.

How is he supposed to go to safety in the bunkers without her?

She kisses him before he can say that, and she pushes him back slightly, an apology in her gaze; she isn't going to listen to him. "I'll meet you in the bunker," she says, and she's gone, racing around the corner before he's able to stop her.

The floor tilts under them suddenly, and Peeta trips into the wall. Penny screams in his ear, and he clutches her tightly, tucking her face into his neck to shield her before he staggers to his feet. Katniss is going to make it to the hospital, and she'll meet him in the bunkers. That means he has to get to the bunkers. He has to get Pennycress to safety, and they'll meet Katniss in the bunkers.

People have started to stream for the bunkers in a wave, and he joins them, cradling Penny to his chest while elbows jostle at his side, and feet knock into his calves, and everyone seems to stumble at once, swaying in unison. It isn't until they reach a corridor that's collapsed, blocking them off from the entrance to the bunkers, that panic tears into them completely. Little fingers dig into his neck in terror, and Peeta presses a kiss to Penny's temple. "It's okay, it's okay," he murmurs, refusing to admit that it isn't.

There are multiple ways into the bunkers.

This one was simply the closest. People have started to try to to shift the debris that block the entrance, but it seems like a waste to Peeta; they don't have time for this. He starts to push his way through the crowd, shoving down the doubt that rises in him with the certainty that this is what Katniss would do. She wouldn't wait to see whether the debris could be moved. She'd run.

He leaves the crowd, turning the corner to find that the corridors are empty now, and he takes off at a spring, dodging the plaster that rains from the ceiling, struggling to keep his footing while the walls shake endlessly around him. The lights in the ceiling cut off abruptly, and he stumbles, cutting his temple on something that blinds him momentarily, but he forces himself up, forward, mumbling nonsensically to Penny while he goes.

"Here! This way!"

Peeta doesn't know who the woman is, but she appears in the hallway, screaming to be heard above the alarm, and the others with her seem to know where they're going. He reaches them, follows them blindly, choking on smoky, powdered plaster, and they make it. To the stairs, and to the bunkers. To safety.

The corridors shake with the bombs that drop, but the impact is nothing in comparison to the that in the hallways above the bunkers, and Peeta slows to a trot. The bunkers are secure. He adjusts his grip on Penny, shifting her up higher in his arms. "It's okay, it's okay," he promises.

They made it.

But his gaze trips from face to face, searching for his family. Ash finds him first.

"PAPA! PAPA! PAPA!"

He slams into Peeta at a run. Peeta sinks to his knees, gathering Ash into his arms with Penny. "I've got you," he murmurs.

Ash is crying while he clings to Peeta, and the words tumble nonsensically from him at first; it takes him a minute to explain that he was with Uncle Bannock, but Uncle Bannock was worried about Aunt Mary, and he told Ash to wait while he looked for Aunt Mary. "But he hasn't come back, and I couldn't find you, or Mama, or Uncle Haymitch, or Aunt Prim, or _anybody_!"

Peeta swallows thickly. "It's okay. You found me, and we're going to find Mama next. Come on."

Ash takes his hand, and they start to weave their way through the bunkers. It's clear that Thirteen wasn't prepared for this, and nobody knows exactly what's going on. People are huddled in groups, crying softly, and there are people, too, in a panic, searching for others with strained, desperate shouts. Like Peeta is.

Soldiers from Thirteen start to try to corral everyone towards the stairs, explaining that the crowds need to go deeper into the bunkers; the walls shake with a bomb to reinforce their words.

But Peeta _has_ to find Katniss. She'll have Davey with her, and they'll retreat to safety together.

Ash stumbles in his effort to keep up with Peeta, and Penny slows him, too, and he knows he needs to pass them off to somebody, to assure that they are taken to safety no matter what. But he's loath to let them out of his sight, out of his arms, and he'll find Katniss any second.

He has to find her.

The soldiers are insistent, angry, telling him that he needs to go to safety _now_.

Plaster rains from the ceiling.

The security that the bunkers offered initially is gone now; they have to go deeper, but—

His spots the yellow, matted curls from a distance. His heart twists in a hundred ways at once: with panic, disbelief, hope. "Davey!" he says, clearing his throat to shout it louder, but Ash shouts it, too, and Penny shouts it, and the boy spins to face them with big, big eyes. Davey.

Relief crashes into Peeta.

Everybody made it. Katniss got to the hospital, brought Davey to the bunkers.

Peeta sinks to his knees to hug Davey while Ash ruffles his hair, and Penny kisses his cheek, and they are a tight, tangled mass on the floor of the corridor. "Where's your Mama?" Peeta asks, smiling breathlessly at his son.

But Davey blinks at him.

No.

_No, no, no_!

Peeta's gaze flies up to land on Prim, and her smile has frozen in place. Rory is with her, and Madge is at his side, holding his arm. But that's it. "She isn't with you?" Prim asks.

"We separated," he breathes. He doesn't wait for her to reply, already moving up to his feet. "Take them down below. I'll get her."

"Peeta," Madge whispers.

But Prim nods, reaching for Pennycress. "We'll meet you down there," she says.

"Wait, Papa!" Ash says, panicked, and Davey locks his arms around Peeta's waist.

"I have to get your mama, buddy," Peeta says, willing Ash to understand, and Rory reaches for Davey. "I'm sorry, but I'll be _right_ back."

Ash nods slowly, and Peeta looks away before the expression on Ash's face breaks him. He squeezes Penny's foot, brushes a hand over Davey's head, and starts for the stairs.

But the chaos from above has reached the bunkers at last; the lights flicker with a crash that makes the corridor tremble violently, and the soldiers urge everyone down, down, _down_. Peeta brushes off the soldier that grabs his arm, heading up the stairs rather than down. Boggs shouts after him, and Peeta starts to take the stairs two at a time.

He turns a corner, making it up a flight, and plows into Finnick.

For a moment, he is stunned. Finnick is covered in blood, limping on an ankle that's twisted at best while Annie screams hysterically from where she's trapped against Gale's chest. "Nell?" Finnick breathes, gaze wildly searching Peeta's face. "She was in the hospital with Prim? She—?"

"I haven't seen her," Peeta says.

"What about Madge?" Gale asks.

Peeta nods, but he doesn't have time to talk to them. "Everybody's that way; they're going further down. But I've got to get Katniss." He starts around them, continuing up the stairs. Finnick is at his heels immediately, coming with him, and they are a flight away when the explosion that rocks the bunkers knocks them both off their feet. It takes a moment for Peeta to recover, but he does.

Only the stairs above them disappear into ceiling.

Peeta blinks away the dust that swirls into his eyes, and disbelief burns at his throat.

No.

"No," Finnick says, struggling to his feet. "No! NO!" He tugs on his hair, tearing at the splintered, ruined stairs that block off their exit a moment later. Peeta starts to help, trying to shift the rubble. But he hasn't managed to make the smallest, slightest dent before Boggs is behind them suddenly, grabbing at Peeta's shoulder while he shouts that they are fools, that it's a waste, that they need to get to safety before their families lose them, too. "I have to get my daughter!" Finnick screams, shoving Boggs away.

Boggs knocks him over the head, and Finnick is out in an instant. Boggs hauls Finnick over his shoulder, turning to Peeta. "I can't carry you both down," he says. "Remember your kids." He pauses, and Peeta nods. "Let's go."

The minutes that it takes them to tumble down flight after flight seem to smear into hours, and Peeta coaches himself to believe that Katniss made it to the bunkers, and he simply wasn't able to find her. But she wouldn't have retreated to the bunkers without Davey. But—but she might've reached the hospital, realized that it was empty, and known that Prim had taken Davey to safety.

She is in the bunkers. He didn't see her earlier.

She has reunited with their family by now, has Penny in her arms. Or she might've left Penny with Prim, and now is trying to push her way past the soldiers to go up the stairs to find _him_.

The impact from the bombs has grown into a distant, ominous rumble when they emerge into the cavern where everyone waits.

The boys spot Peeta before he spots them, and they race to him.

Katniss isn't with them.

His eyes fasten on Prim, and she shakes her head at him. "No," she breathes. "No. No! She's up there! You were supposed to get her! _No_!" She makes to move to the stairs, shoving Rory aside when he reaches for her; she wrenches her arm from his grasp with a fury he didn't know Prim possessed.

"The stairs were blocked," he whispers. "There wasn't a way up."

"YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GET HER!" Prim screams.

Rory manages to gather her into his arms, but she flails against him.

"I'm sorry," Peeta whispers. "I couldn't—"

It's not real, it's not real, _it's not real_.

He looks away from Prim, only for his gaze to catch on Ash, who stares at him with knowing, watery eyes. "Mama isn't coming," he says. It's a question, but the answer sticks in Peeta's throat, and _that's_ the answer. Ash looks away, nodding, and that's when the truth crashes into Peeta completely at last.

* * *

He knows the chances that she was able to survive the bombs are slim, but.

She could've found a place to hide.

There isn't a way to know for certain as long as they are trapped in the bunkers. Not really, and the days that follow are the worst in his life.

They have the supplies that they need to survive, but they are trapped; the ceiling is low, and the lights are dim, and the shock that grips Peeta at first gives way to a restlessness that makes it impossible to sleep, to eat, to _think_. He needs to get out, to search for her. He needs to find her.

Two days in, the message on the radio that demands they surrender immediately starts to loop.

It cuts off abruptly that night, and the radio is static.

Coin didn't make it to the bunkers, and nobody knows what's going on. Heavensbee didn't make it either. Boggs is now the impromptu, highest ranking leader, but he's at a loss for what to do.

Haymitch didn't make it. Neither did Bannock, or Mary. Johanna didn't make it. Delly didn't make it. Posy, Vick, and Mrs. Hawthorne didn't make it. Mrs. Everdeen didn't make it. Nell didn't make it. The list goes on, and it's impossible that everyone on it is miraculously going to survive the bombings. But there's a chance that _someone_ is.

Four days in, Prim wakes in a warm, bloody pool, and her sobs echo through the cavern. Now she's lost her mother, her sister, _and_ her baby, and she refuses to be comforted.

But she might _not_ have lost her sister.

He doesn't say it, and neither does she, but he knows Prim harbors the same stupid hope.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. He was ready to give his life for this war, to end the Games, to stop the Capitol. But he wasn't ready to give up Katniss. He can't. He _won't_. He refuses.

Eight days in, Boggs gives the okay for them to leave the bunkers at last.

It looks as though the bombs have finally stopped for good.

The problem is that the ruins above them have created a prison, and there _isn't_ a way to leave.

* * *

"There are the tunnels," Boggs says. "I don't know where they drop off, but it's a start."

Apparently, the tunnels were built to lead away from Thirteen in case the bunkers needed to be evacuated in secret. That's everything that Boggs knows about them: that they exist, and why. He doesn't know where they'll take them, or that anyone's bothered to check that they haven't collapsed in the years since they were built.

But it's what they've got.

It takes a week to clear the rubble that blocks the tunnels. Boggs suggests that only the soldiers explore the tunnels at first while the others wait with in the bunkers, but Peeta isn't about to wait, and he isn't about to leave his children either. In the end, everyone is eager to leave the cage that the bunkers have become, and they head into the dark, musty tunnels with the intention not to return.

The ceiling brushes Peeta's head, and there are rats at his feet.

He hoists Penny up, carrying her piggyback, and he keeps the boys at his sides; he's glad to have their elbows brush his, reminding him constantly that they're beside him. Alive, and safe.

The incline is gradual; when he realizes they're walking up, he doesn't know how long they have been. It doesn't matter. They emerge into a small, grassy clearing that's circled in trees, and everyone is overwhelmed with relief for a moment, laughing and crying and turning in circles to take it in. It isn't long before Wiress notices that there's a slanted, grey building in trees; it's stocked with supplies: food, water, blankets, medicine, flashlights, maps.

It's everything they could've hoped for at this point.

But it's when they're in the open that Peeta realizes how few of them there really are, how few made it to the bunkers. It can't be more than two hundred people.

Boggs asks for volunteers to return Thirteen above the ground, saying they need to start the search for survivors as soon as possible. Peeta is ready to hand Pennycress to Prim, but Prim says that she wants to go.

"Prim," Rory starts.

"I'm _going_," Prim snarls.

Nobody tries to fight her. Prim goes. Peeta goes, too, leaving the children with Madge.

It starts to grow dark quickly, but they push through the night, reaching the ruins an hour after dawn. One solider from Thirteen is sick at the sight.

The smell that hits them a moment after the sight is worse.

The bombs carved Thirteen off the map, leaving a crater in the ground. Thick, black smoke drifts into the sky, meeting with the ash that rains softly around them. For a moment, their group is stunned, and everyone stares.

Finnick is the first to shake away the shock. "Nell!" he shouts.

Peeta follows, and the group splits up easily, calling for the people they care about. It's hard to see, and Peeta's eyes start to burn. But when smoke catches in his lungs, choking him, Boggs assumes him that it isn't toxic. "Don't worry," he says, and his eyes wander over Peeta's shoulder to stare grimly at the ruins. "It's done it's damage."

The ash coats his tongue, and it's a struggle to shout for her. But he does.

They find body after body, and most aren't recognizable, but plenty are. Gale carries a sobbing, screaming woman from Thirteen away from the rubble after she finds her son with his legs torn off, and his eyes wide, wide open.

Peeta strains to hear a groan from the rubble, or a faint, whispered plea for help, or _anything_.

He doesn't.

There aren't survivors.

He refuses to give up, only his body seems to disagree. He shoe catches on something, and his leg twists under him; he tries to break his fall with his hands, only to cut his palms on the jagged metal piece that protrudes from the rubble. For a moment, he is dizzy from the speed at which he was brought to his knees, and he coughs violently on the ash that rushed into his lungs.

"Shit," Gale says. It takes him a moment to cross the ruins to where Peeta is. "Did you twist your ankle?" he asks. His eyes land on Peeta's black, bloody hands. "_Shit_." He grabs Peeta's elbow, has a hand on his back. "Come on. We have to bandage that shit before it gets infected."

Peeta shakes him off. "I'm fine."

But he isn't. His leg refuses to cooperate, and his attempt to stand is failure. He falls onto his ass, locking his jaw to try to stop the sob that rattles in his chest. It doesn't work.

She's dead.

One he starts to cry, he isn't able to stop. He is paralyzed, gasping breathlessly between sobs. He wants to believe it isn't real, that it didn't happen. But it is real. It did happen. He rocks forward, back, raising his hands, curling them into fists, hissing at the pain; he rocks forward, back, collapsing in on himself, and Gale takes his shoulders to hold him steady while he sobs.

Eventually, the tremors that wrack his body give way to stillness.

From across the ruins, Finnick screams for Nell.

The words stick in Peeta's throat, but he manages to say them. "She's dead."

"I know," Gale murmurs. "Come on." He stands, and Peeta is able to stand with him.

The world tilts unsteadily on his feet, but he finds his footing, and he nods at Gale. "I'm fine."

* * *

The hope that greets them when they return to the clearing where the others are is awful.

But it fades quickly; Peeta watches it drain from Madge's face.

"Where's Mama?" Davey asks. He's eager, trying to look past Peeta for Katniss. Pennycress is in Ash's lap, sucking her thumb, and she reaches for Peeta when he squats to answer Davey. "Where's Mama, Papa?" Davey looks at Peeta now, and Peeta can't answer him; the words won't come. What is he supposed to say? How is he supposed to explain that Mama's _gone_?

Ash realizes; his eyes widen at Peeta's silence. "No," he says. "But—" His chin trembles. "No!"

"I'm sorry, buddy," Peeta murmurs.

"Did she have to go to the Capitol?" Davey asks.

Penny lurches forward slightly, insistently, and he pulls her into his arms, trying to find his voice. "Where's Mama?" Penny asks, leaning her head sleepily on Peeta's shoulder. She isn't upset, or concerned, and it makes it worse; Peeta's throat starts to close with tears.

Ash is crying now, and Davey begins to understand, too, glancing between them.

"Mama couldn't get to safety in time," Peeta explains, swallowing thickly. "I'm sorry."

"But—but you were going to get her," Davey says, refusing to give in, and the look on his face breaks Peeta; he isn't able to blink away his tears. Davey starts to cry when Peeta starts to.

He reaches for the boys, and the tumble into his arms. He clings to them, and to Pennycress, but she doesn't understand yet, doesn't realize; she tries to wipe the tears off Peeta's cheeks, shushing him. She's a_ baby_, and she needs her mother, and, _oh, God_, she isn't going to be able to remember Katniss when she's grown, is she? That's not how it's supposed to be.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

He chokes on tears, and holds his children closer, tighter. They're everything he's got left now.

* * *

It isn't safe to stay in Thirteen, and there isn't a reason to. Nothing's left for them in Thirteen.

They need to find out who is left in Panem, and where they are. Boggs thinks that Coin bombed the Capitol, explaining that the plan in place for years was to bomb the Capitol as soon as the Capitol bombed them; of course, they didn't think it would ever really, truly happen. But it did.

If the Capitol was bombed, Snow might have been killed.

Or he might've found a way to hide, and to survive, and is now in a position to win the war. If he hasn't won already, that is. The airwaves on the radio are dead, and have been since they cut off in the bunkers; they have several small, black portable TV monitors, too, but the channels are endless, buzzing static. It's useless. They don't know what's going on, and they need to find out.

It's difficult to travel with the constant, paralyzing fear that hovercrafts with bombs are going to appear suddenly in the sky above them, but they don't have a choice.

They follow the maps from the cabin, crossing quickly into Twelve, or what used to be Twelve.

The devastation is awful.

He wishes the children didn't have to see it, but there isn't a way to hide it from them.

Madge is good with them, though. She asks the boys to hold her hands, explaining that it's scary not to be able to see, and it leaves her lonely. Davey makes up stories to share with her, and Ash thinks up jokes to make her laugh; their determination to help Aunt Madge distracts them from the ruins, and their hunger. From the fact that they've lost their home, their friends. Their mother.

It takes a week to escape the rubble in Twelve.

But when they reach Ten, it's clear that it must've been bombed, too. Peeta suspects that Snow tried to bomb the country into submission, only to succeed in destroying everything. He was desperate to control everyone, and now there isn't anyone left from him to control. Except them.

Except their group, struggling to survive on dwindling, insufficient supplies.

They aren't in Ten for a day before they stumble onto proof that there are survivors in Ten.

Several rotting, mutilated bodies are strung up from crudely constructed gallows. Animals have picked at the corpses, but their clothing remains in scraps, and it's clear who they are, or who they were: Peacekeepers. Peeta turns Penny away quickly, trying to distract her, and he tries to shield the boys, too, but he isn't really, completely able to.

Annie screams hysterically at the sight.

Mostly, she passes the days in a daze, asking constantly where Nell is, and Finnick is able to keep her calm. He isn't now. Her screams are impossible to quell, and Peeta watches Boggs tighten his grip on his gun, murmuring to Gale. But nobody emerges to attack their group, or to take the credit for the Peacekeepers. Eventually, exhaustion overwhelms Annie, and she quiets.

They move on, trekking into the farmland that surrounds Ten.

It doesn't look as though the farms were bombed, but there isn't a soul in sight. Cautiously, they venture into the small, ramshackle houses that circle the fields. The electricity doesn't work, and there isn't food to be found, or medicine. It's clear that the houses were abandoned, and the occupants took with them everything valuable, or useful. "But where would they _go_?" Rory asks.

Nobody knows.

They spend the night in the houses, but Peeta isn't able to sleep.

His mind wanders to who might've lived in these homes, to where they are now. It wanders to Katniss, and what she would've thought about the Peacekeepers, and these houses, and everything that they've seen. He imagines a conversation with her. Closes his eyes, and sees the tension in her mouth when she eyes the ruined, strung up bodies. She whispers that Darius wasn't terrible, and he understands. "I know," he says, opening his eyes, and it's quiet.

She's dead.

In the morning, Boggs starts to organize them into groups to scour the houses for supplies. "Best to set off as soon as possible," he says. Nobody argues with him. But two days later, a woman from Thirteen announces that she wants to stay in Ten, and she's talked to others, and she knows that others do, too. There are houses to stay in, a river nearby for water, and land to farm.

"But why bother to stay?" Gale asks.

"Why bother to go?" Leevy asks.

He stares at her. "It isn't safe," he says at last. "We need to figure out what's going on. We don't know why the people _from_ Ten chose to leave their homes. That matters, and we—we need to know what's going on in the Capitol, and with the war."

"If you want to go, go," Leevy says. "But I'm going to stay." She glances at the woman from Thirteen. "I've talked with Emily, and this is what I want to do."

"How many wish to stay?" Boggs asks, glancing around the group.

Slowly, most raise their hands.

"I see," Boggs says. "Does anyone wish to leave?" His gaze flickers to Finnick, to Gale, to Peeta.

"Yes," Finnick says, and there's a certainty in his voice. He isn't going to stay. Neither is Peeta. It hadn't occurred to him to stay before now, but he isn't going to. There's an emptiness to the district that makes it feel haunted, that makes it seem wrong to stay, to linger with ghosts.

The group is split close to cleanly in two, and Emily claims that numbers are enough in each for both to survive on their own; they don't need to stay in one large group. It's clear that Boggs disagrees, but he doesn't try to argue, and it's decided: those who wish to stay are going to stay, and those who wish to leave are going to leave.

Peeta is going, and it isn't a question that Prim is, too, holding Ash's hand, and Rory glances from her to Gale. "What about you?" he asks.

"He wants to go," Leevy says, staring at Gale. Her chin trembles, but she musters a sad, knowing smile. "There isn't a child tying us together, and there isn't love neither. There hasn't been in years. Not really." Her gaze doesn't waver, staring at Gale. "Not the kind that makes a marriage."

"Lee," Gale says.

"If you want to stay, stay," she says. "But if you want to go, go." She pauses. "Which is it?"

Gale is silent, and he drops his gaze at last.

Leevy nods. "Right." Her eyes flicker past Gale to where Madge stands with Davey. There's a handkerchief folded into a strip, tied neatly around Madge's head to cover her eyes; Peeta realizes suddenly that it belongs to Gale. Leevy gives a tearful, humourless chuckle. "Okay. Fine."

They leave that day. Their group is smaller. Somber. But the sky is cloudy, and there's a breeze, and Prim starts to sing to amuse the children.

In the afternoon, Gale takes Madge's hand.

Did Katniss know? She must not have, or she would have told Peeta.

Actually, that isn't true. Katniss might have known, but she thought it wasn't her business, or it wasn't important, and there wasn't a reason to tell him. It doesn't matter. Except it _does_. It matters because he wants to ask her what she knew, and he can't. He wants to ask her what she thinks, and he can't. He wants to ask her _anything_, wants to talk to her, wants to hold her hand, wants to be with her right now. But she's gone, and he can't.

* * *

The guilt crashes into Peeta in waves, consuming his thoughts. He should've stopped her when she pushed him away, sprinting off. He could've, and he should've. He should've refused to separate. He should've dropped Penny off as soon as he reached the bunkers, running after Katniss. He should've knocked Boggs off his feet, and torn his way through the rubble to find her.

It would've been suicide, but he doesn't care. He should've done everything to get to her. He should've been with her when she died.

He should've died, too.

He knows he isn't supposed to think like that. His children need him, and he knows that.

But he could've at least _tried_ to save her. After all, he could've grabbed her arm. He could've overpowered her, and dragged her to the bunkers. He could've saved her. He _should_'ve saved her.

* * *

It takes weeks to pass through the quiet, empty farmland that comprises Ten, and winter starts to creep up on them. The cold worries Peeta; when Pennycress is in his arms, she inches her hands under the collar of his shirt to press her freezing little fingers against his skin. It scares him.

Their group is tough, but they aren't going to be able to survive a winter on the road.

Luckily, they don't have to.

They reach Nine at last, and it turns out the survivors in Nine chose to stay in their district rather than to flee. They commandeered a factory, transforming it into a fortress, and the guards that circle the factory welcome the stragglers from Thirteen into the cramped, make-shift city in a box.

They run the factory with an efficiency that puts Thirteen to shame; everything is organized, and everything is rationed, and they are reluctant to share their resources with strangers.

But they do. They share their shelter, and their food. They share the yarn that Finnick asks for, and needles to knit, which he gives to Annie. She knits mittens, hats, and scarves for Peeta's children, and for Boggs's. She knits for Nell, too: yellow mittens, a scarf to match, and a yellow hat with knitted green flowers sewn on the fringe. Peeta looks away when Finnick pockets them.

Nobody from Nine knows what's going on in the Capitol, or with the war.

The radios are static, and the televisions are, too; there hasn't been a train from the Capitol since Nine was bombed, or a hovercraft, or _anything_. They are convinced that Snow was killed, though, and that the government in the Capitol was destroyed. After all, he wouldn't have allowed them to flourish this long on their own without him.

Madge whispers to Gale that she didn't think this city in a factory was what it meant to _flourish_.

But nobody in Nine is interested in what Madge thinks. Their faces are hard, lined. Angry, and ready to defend what they have left no matter what. They aren't about to force those from Thirteen to starve to death in the cold, but they aren't happy that they have to house them either.

The winter that follows is the worst in Peeta's life.

They are trapped in the factory, living off tasteless, shrivelled vegetables that are grown within the factory. There isn't water to waste, meaning that nobody is able to bath properly, and the smell that clings to their sweaty, unwashed bodies lingers thickly in the stale, still air. It's awful.

Katniss would've hated this place worse than she hated Thirteen.

There are moments when he forgets that she's dead.

She lives in the minutes when he isn't asleep, and he isn't awake. In the pauses in his sentences when his mind is blank for an instant, and in the moments when he is distracted, and he turns to share a joke, to ask a question, to see her reaction to something that Boggs says. It makes the knot in his chest tighten painfully when she isn't there, forcing him to remember that she's gone.

In some ways, he refuses to believe it's real. How can it be?

How is possible for her simply to be _gone_?

But she is, and it breaks Peeta's heart when Davey screams at Hestia that she isn't.

Hestia is a small, shy woman from Thirteen whose family was killed in the bombings. There isn't a thing not to like about her; she's smart, thinks everything through, is kind, patient with Annie, friendly with Madge, is willing to watch his children when Peeta isn't able to. But after she explains to Davey that he can't leave the factory to hunt for food, Davey glares at her, and replies coldly that his sister is hungry, and he knows how to set a snare. His mother taught him.

"I know, dear," Hestia says. "But it isn't safe for you to leave, and—"

"What do you care?" Davey snarls.

Hestia blinks at him in surprise. "I care about _you_."

"Well, don't!"

"Davey," Prim says, touching his shoulder. But he shrugs her off, and his dark grey eyes burn into Hestia's face. Peeta knows that he needs to speak up, to intervene. But he's paralyzed, seeing Katniss in their son: in his eyes, in the shape of his face, in the fury that radiates off him.

"Dear, I know you miss your mother," Hestia starts.

"No, you don't!" Davey says. "You don't know anything about me! And I'm not your dear, and you can't tell me what to do! I'm going to go hunting, and you—and when my mama finds us, I'm going to tell her that I caught squirrels like she taught me, and I—and I looked after Penny!"

Hestia opens her mouth to reply, and Peeta steps in at last.

He squats to Davey's height. Davey swipes at his tears, glaring at Peeta, and his gaze makes the words catch in Peeta's throat. He doesn't explain that Katniss is dead, and that Davey knows this. He doesn't say a word. He can't. He pulls Davey into his arms. Davey hugs him, whispering the words into Peeta's neck. "She's going to come back," he says. "She always does."

"Not this time," Peeta says. The words are hoarse, and he isn't certain that Davey heard.

"Just wait, Papa," Davey murmurs. "She'll find us. You'll see."

That night, Gale asks Davey to help him to make a snare. "I don't know that I'll be able to catch anything in the snow," he says, "but I figured I've got a better shot if you can help me. You're really good at snares, right? Can you show me how I've got to do it?"

Davey shows him, and he smiles a little when Finnick praises the snares that Davey's made.

The grief comes in waves to the children.

Not to Peeta.

The grief stays with Peeta, and time seems to crawl in that cold, stale factory without her.

The coal that was used in the past to heat the factory was brought in on a train from Twelve, which means they have to come up with a way to heat the factory _without_ coal. Their solution is to burn what little wood they are able to gather in big metal bins, forcing everyone to huddle around the bins at night when the cold is the worst. Peeta didn't know that cold like this existed, didn't realize that winter in Twelve was mild in comparison to this bitter, brutal winter.

But days fade into weeks, and weeks turn into months.

Penny gets a horrible ear infection, and the pain makes her scream for Katniss. Peeta sits with her for day after day, staying up with her night after night, and she begs for her mama until he starts to cry, too. He can't take the pain from her, and he can't bring her mother back to her. He's useless.

Soon after she recovers, the cold starts to thaw, and they make plans to leave Nine as soon as possible. On the first warm day in March, they do.

* * *

He's learned to live with the nightmares. The come every single night, and they paralyze him. Katniss screams for him, reaching out a hand while the bombs explore around them, and he's desperate to get to her, but he can't. He's trapped, watching the rubble seem to swallow her up, and wounds open in her face, and her fingers grow blackened, bloody, and she screams his name.

He jerks from the nightmare, but there isn't relief in waking.

The worst is when there _is_ relief for a moment: when for an instant, his sleepy, terrorized mind tricks him, and he thinks he is in Twelve, and Katniss is with him, and the bombing was a nightmare. But she isn't there, and he stares into the dark while it sinks in that she really was caught in the bombs, and buried in the rubble, and he couldn't get to her, wasn't there, left her.

Mostly, he sleeps only as long as necessary, and that gives him a respite from the nightmares; it's impossible to dream when he's exhausted. But the nightmares find a way to reach him eventually, and he knows they always will.

* * *

They pass through Eight in less than a month. The district was bombed sporadically; they walk from rubble into an empty, untouched streets and back into rubble for days. Gale claims that there was an exodus to the north, explaining that there are tracks everywhere that point that way.

But they aren't going to follow the tracks; it won't lead them to the answers they want.

They cut into Two, which looks to have been destroyed completely, and are in the rubble in One for a day when people circle around them suddenly, demanding to know who they are. They aren't given a chance to answer before a woman recognizes Finnick, and her eyes land on Peeta next, and she exclaims in delight, lowering her rifle, and that's when everything is explained at last.

The bombs that the Capitol dropped on Thirteen were meant to destroy the district.

Simultaneously, the Capitol bombed every other district to force them into submission. They were careful only to bomb the towns rather than the sections in the districts that provide the Capitol with resources. It was calculated, and it would've worked. Except that Coin fired back.

Thirteen bombed the Capitol, razing it.

The bombing on the Capitol threw everything into chaos, and that's when the rebels from Three struck. They put a bug into the system that froze the computers that run the country, and they trashed the plants that provide electricity for everyone in Panem, and left the country in the dark.

"It was easy to take the Capitol after that," Gene explains. He's a tall, reedy man with a tick in his cheek, and there's a look about him that puts Peeta off, but he seems to be in charge.

"What about Snow?" Boggs asks. "I take it he was killed in the bombing."

Gene grins, revealing two yellow front teeth that point in. "Nope. The rat was able to escape the bombs. But he wasn't able to escape us."

He leads their group to the Capitol; it's a day's walk, and they arrive when the sun is about to disappear behind the horizon, leaving a bloody purple sky above them. The light is enough to see that bodies that are strung up like the bodies in Ten were. Months hanging, and they aren't recognizable. But a sign is hung from the one in the middle to make it clear who he is: _Mr. Snow_.

Ash stares at the bodies until Peeta turns him away with a hand on his shoulder.

"Were there survivors?" Finnick asks. "In the Capitol, I mean."

"Besides the slick little kings that hid in their bunkers 'til we dragged 'em out, nope," Gene says.

In the morning, Gene takes them to Three.

The mayor in Thirteen is large, hard woman with frosty white hair. She greets them with a smile.

In fact, everyone in Three is thrilled at their arrival: thrilled to meet Finnick, Annie, Peeta, and his family, and to welcome the group into their district. They look at Peeta with wide, tearful eyes when he explains that Katniss was killed, and they describe in detail what Gene told in brief. That's when it hits Peeta that it's over. The war is over, and they won. They really, truly won.

But it doesn't feel like a victory; it doesn't feel like anything.

They travelled across the country, and for what? To learn that Snow was dead.

He needed something to do, and that was something. Now he knows that Snow is dead, and the war is over. It doesn't matter. Conversation buzzes around him, and he hears Madge ask the mayor about contact with survivors around the country. It doesn't bring Katniss back to life, knowing that Snow is dead. What is he supposed to do now? Where is he supposed to go next?

He is jarred from his thoughts when Ash exclaims for him suddenly. "Pick a card, Papa!"

"Uck," Davey says, making a face before he seems to force himself to swallow the slimy tomato slice that he fished from a can. "Tomatoes are gross."

"_You_'re gross," Ash says.

"Shut up," Davey says.

"_You_ shut up."

"Shut up!"

"_You_—"

"Boys," Peeta says.

Davey sticks his tongue out at Ash, and Ash sticks his tongue out, too, making a face to mock Davey. But Davey shoots to his feet, kicks Ash suddenly in the shin, and races off before his brother is able to retaliate, shouting "Uncle Finnick! Do you want to trade a cracker for a tomato?"

Ash isn't fazed. "Uncle Rory taught me a trick, Papa. Pick a card!" He grins at Peeta, and Peeta smiles faintly in reply, picking a card.

* * *

In some ways, things start to get a lot better. They have everything that they need in Three, and they are safe with the reassurance that the bombing is finished, and Snow is dead.

But in most ways, things remain the same.

Katniss is dead, and that isn't okay; it'll never be okay. It'll never get better.

For Peeta, or for their children. For Prim.

The explosion happens suddenly, startling Peeta, but he knows that things have built to this for a while. Things have been tense between them for months. Actually, things have been tense between them _for a year_, and it comes to a head in Three. "Would it kill you to _look_ at me?" Rory snaps at her, and his voice is loud, pointed, drawing everyone in the canteen to look at him.

Prim spins on her heel, glaring pointedly at him. "There. I'm _looking_ at you."

His cheek twitches, but he doesn't respond immediately. His gaze drifts past her to the eyes that are trained on them. He lowers his voice. "Can we not do this here?" he asks, softening.

"Do what?" Prim asks.

"Talk," Rory says.

"What do you want to talk about?" Her face is hard.

"I—I want to talk about _this_," he says, and the anger in his voice is mixed with frustration, and tinted with a strained, desperate plea. "How you look at me, and—"

"I thought the problem was that I _don't_ look at you," Prim says.

"—and how you _talk _to me. How you don't have time for anything to do with me, and you—"

"I'm sorry you feel that I don't cater to your needs _sufficiently_, Rory," Prim snaps.

"Stop!" he shouts. "Just _stop_!" His face seems to spasm in frustration. "This isn't _you_, Prim!"

She crosses her arms over her chest. "I don't know who you think I am," she says, "or what it is that you want me to say. I'm sorry that you don't . . . _enjoy my company_, or whatever your problem is. But what am I supposed to do about that?" She glares at him. "What do you want?"

"I want my wife!" Rory says. The words seem to break the edge in Prim's expression, and Rory continues softly, desperately. "I know you miss your sister. I know that her death was really, _really_ hard for you. I know, and I'm sorry. I loved her, too, and I _hate_ that you lost her. But it's like you're angry at—at _the world_ for her death, and you refuse to—and it's _changed_ you, Prim."

It's quiet.

"What am I supposed to do about that?" Prim asks. "I _am_ angry. I'm angry, and I'm lonely, and I want my sister. I _need_ my sister." Her eyes are wet.

Rory takes a single, hesitant step towards her. "I know it's hard. My sister died, too, and—"

"Don't." Prim swallows visibly, and her hands are fisted at her sides. "_Don't_. Don't act like you understand. You don't. I know that you lost Posy, but it's not the same. It's not, and it's—I know that's a terrible thing to say, okay? I know. But it's the truth. It's _not_ the same." She explodes. "Katniss _raised_ me! I would've starved without her, and—and do you think I would've survived the Games? She was _always_ there! Always! I wasn't supposed to lose her!"

"Prim," Rory starts.

Her tears spring free, and she shakes her head at him. "I'm sorry that I don't know how to live my life without her. I'm sorry that I haven't adjusted to a world without my sister on your _schedule_. But that isn't how it works! I'm sorry—I'm sorry, I can't—" She turns away from him.

He reaches for her arm, but she jerks away from his grasp, and she leaves. Rory stares after her.

Slowly, Peeta rises to his feet. He spares a smile for Davey, whose eyes are wide, and for Ash, whose face is pale, and tugs on Penny's braid to reassure her.

He finds Prim behind the building with her back to the bricks. Her hand is clapped to her mouth to cover her sobs, and her body shakes with them. She folds easily into his embrace, crumpling against his chest. "I—I know that—I—" She isn't able to say the words, but she doesn't have to.

"Me, too," he murmurs. She gasps in reply, and he rubs her back, reminding her gently to breathe.

* * *

They aren't in Three for long before Gale is involved in the plans to rebuild the country. Madge is, too.

They are eager to discuss their ideas for new, democratic government, and it's clear this is a plan they've thought about for a while. They want to connect the survivors across the country, allowing them to rebuild the districts together, and giving everyone a say in the government that they want to form. They talk about the radio, and how they need to get on the air to communicate with the country. How they need to repair the trains, and that'll take help from the survivors in Six. How they ought to rebuild the Capitol, and to bury the dead, and that includes the bodies that are strung up. "It's time to move on," Madge says. "To heal."

The mayor in Three agrees with everything that they suggest.

"I have to admit, their fancy talk makes it sound tantalizingly possible," Finnick says.

Peeta shrugs. "I think that's because it _is_."

"Does that mean you're going to go with them to the Capitol?" Finnick asks.

Madge wants him to. She says that they need his help to rebuild the country from scratch. But he's tired. He doesn't want to help rebuild the country from scratch. He's done his part. It took everything he had, and he doesn't care about the country now, or about the government, or about the strangers across the country who managed to survive the war.

"I might stay in Three," he says. "Just start fresh, and try to make it a home."

"Sure." Finnick nods. "But if that's your plan, how do you feel about making a home in Four?" He says the words casually, but it's clear they weren't spontaneous; Peeta glances at him in surprise. "I'm ready to go home," Finnick explains. "Annie is, too." He pauses. "She's pregnant."

"Oh, wow. Congratulations."

Finnick smiles. "Anyway. It's time for us to go. And if you're up for it, we'd love for you to come with us. I talked to Annie, and she's, well, actually, she's under the assumption that _of course_ you're going to come with us. It didn't occur to her that you wouldn't." He smiles. "She adores your kids, you know. I do, too. And, well, you aren't the _worst_. So. What do you think?"

Peeta doesn't have to think about his answer. Not really. There isn't a reason to say in Three.

If he's going to try to make a home for his kids, better to do it with the family they've got left. "Okay."

* * *

They stay in Three for the toasting. Penny collects dandelions to string into a crown for Madge, Gale dresses in clothing that belonged to the mayor's husband, and the ceremony is short, simple.

They use sweet apple bread that Peeta bakes for them, and Madge cries when she tells Gale that she's loved him since she was a girl. She doesn't wear a kerchief over her pale, unseeing eyes anymore, and Gale leans in to press a kiss to the thin white scar under one eye, and a kiss to the soft pale skin under her eyebrow. He kisses her cheek, and the corner of her mouth, and he takes her hands, replying that he hadn't known it was possible to love a person as much as he loves her.

Penny starts to clap, and it breaks the spell that everyone's under.

They cheer for the newly married couple, and Madge laughs, blowing Penny a kiss.

It isn't until the afternoon that Madge finds Peeta. "I'm going to miss you," she says. She smiles a little, but her face is hesitant.

"What?"

She bites her lip, and he waits. "I love you," she continues at last. I love you _dearly_, Peeta, and I know you're going to make sure that your children never forget Katniss." She pauses, and he nods at her slowly. "But I'm afraid they're going to forget _you_," she says. "I mean the you that you used to be. I can't imagine what it's been like for you to lose her, and I'm not saying you have to be who you were before you lost her, but you can't—you can't lose yourself, too, Peeta."

She stares at him apologetically, and he is forced to drop her gaze.

But he finds his voice after a moment, and he tries to smile at her. "I love you, too," he says, "and—and I know what you're trying to say, and I'm trying. Honestly, I am."

She nods. "I know." It's quiet. He smiles, and she does, too, nodding more certainly before she pulls him into a hug. "I know it'll be hard to stay in touch, but you better. Listen to the radio. The mayor thinks she'll be able to get us on air soon." She draws back, waiting, and he promises.

* * *

He learns the night before they plan to leave that Rory isn't going to come with them. Hestia is, and others from Thirteen. But it turns out that Rory plans to go to the Capitol.

"He wants to stay with his brother," Prim says. "I understand."

Her voice is calm, and Peeta watches her pick a spool from her box, thread her needle, and start carefully to stitch up a tear in Ash's shirt. "But you're going to District Four with us," Peeta questions finally, and Prim nods. Her eyes stay on her work. "There are things you can't take back, Prim. _This_ is a thing you can't take back." He pauses. "Do you really want to leave him?"

"I want to go where my family goes, and you're taking my family to Four."

"I don't have to," he says. She looks at him, and he offers a small, encouraging smile. "If you want to stay with Rory, I won't make you choose."

"But you want to go to Four," Prim says. "I know you do, and it's better for them, isn't it?" She doesn't wait for an answer. "If the situation were reversed, what do you think she'd do?" Her mouth is pressed into a line, and she stares at Peeta with a challenge in her gaze.

Peeta sighs. "She would do what you're about to," he says. "But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do."

Prim drops his gaze, and stares intently at the neat little stitches that she's sewn in Ash's shirt. But she's finished. It's mended. "If the situation were reversed, you'd follow Katniss," she whispers, and her eyes are wet when her gaze returns to Peeta. "No matter what, you'd stay with her. Wouldn't you?"

There isn't a reason for him to answer; she knows his answer. "It's different," he says.

"It's not," Prim says, shaking her head. "I used to think that the way you loved Katniss was the way that husbands love their wives. But the way you loved her—" She swallows thickly, shaking her head. "I promise I've—I've thought about this." She manages to smile tearfully at him. "It's for the best."

He doesn't try to argue with her.

Rory isn't there to see them off in the morning, and Prim takes Ash's hand, asking him to tell her a joke.

* * *

They aren't on the road for a week before they cross into Four, but it takes longer to reach the water, and that's where they're going: that's where Finnick grew up, and that's where the survivors in Four are. The country was bombed a year ago, and Peeta is amazed what Four was able to accomplish in a year; they created a government for themselves after the bombing, and managed to clear the rubble. They managed to bury their dead, and to start to rebuild their district.

It's clear the survivors in Four aren't at a loss for what to do without the Capitol.

In fact, it is easy to settle into a life in Four.

The house that belonged to Finnick's uncle is empty, and that's where they live at first.

Finnick picks a boat from those that sit in the harbor without owners, fixing it up easily, and takes it onto the water. Most in Four make a living off the water, and Finnick is happy to join their ranks. But when Peeta learns that the bakery in Four was destroyed in the bombs, he decides to build a bakery where other new, rebuilt shops are beginning to spring up. The survivors in Four are delighted at the prospect, furnishing him with the supplies for construction.

Summer arrives, and his pale, pasty skin burns, peels, and browns.

But freckles bloom on Penny's nose, and it makes Peeta smile. "Mama used to freckle in the sun, too," he says, tapping her little, freckled nose. She pinks in pleasure, biting the smile in her lip; throughout the day, he notices her tracing her fingers carefully over the freckles on her face in awe.

Penny loves to hear about Katniss. She asks Peeta about her constantly, and she questions Prim, too, and Finnick. The stories that she loves the best are those that involve her, and Peeta is happy to tell them to her, to make it clear to her in every possible way that her mother loved her.

He tells her about the way that when she was a baby, Katniss used to take her into the bath with her, and little baby Penny always, always nodded off. "Five minutes in your mother's arms in the water, and you started to snore," he says. "Mama thought it was funny. Who slept in the bath? _My baby, that's who_. But she loved it. I think she took you into the bath every single night."

"Is that what she called me?" Penny asks.

"Her baby? That's what you were! Her baby. She was the first to call you Penny. She called you Pen every once in a while, too. Do you remember?"

He knows she doesn't, but she nods eagerly at him anyway.

It isn't supposed to be like this; she isn't supposed to live on stories. But it's what's left, and he gives them to her constantly, trying to make Katniss real to her.

Finnick teaches the children how to swim that summer, and they are eager to learn to fish, too.

In September, Annie's baby is born.

"Romy Odair," Finnick says, gazing at her with an awe that takes the years off his face. Romy is seven pounds, six ounces, has soft red fuzz on her head, and proves to be an easy, happy baby.

"She's pretty," Prim says.

"She's perfect," Finnick says.

But she's a reminder, too. The worst are the moments when Annie is confused, when she forgets: when she is in the kitchen, and Romy starts to fuss, and she breathes, "hush, Nell, my darling, hush." Or when she is tired, and she puts Romy in the crib, whispering, "sweet dreams, my sweet Nell," leaving the name to echo in the silence that follows.

Finnick smiles at Annie with sad, tired eyes. "Romy, my love. That's Romy."

Annie nods at him, returning his smile.

Finnick looks at the ground, and Peeta looks away.

He knows what it feels like to have a ghost at your side no matter where you go, or what you do. How everything is paler in the shadows that they cast, is washed in gray, and you aren't able to feel the way that you used to; everything is softer around the edges. Soft, and dull. Happiness isn't what it used to be, and it doesn't matter what changes in your life, or how much time passes.

The children are better, adjusting to a life without her.

They finish with the bakery in November, and Peeta moves his family into the flat that he built above the kitchen. Prim comes, too, sharing a room with Penny. It's strange not to live with Finnick, Annie, and Romy after months in such close, cramped quarters with them, but it's good.

It's healthy at least. It's what they're supposed to do: move on, start over. Flourish.

Ash likes to listen to the radio in the evenings, saying that he promised Aunt Madge. For months, he slowly, carefully turns the dial on the radio, and is met with static. But when the leaves on the trees start to change, he turns the dial, and hears Madge. He yelps in excitement, spinning up the volume. They listen to Madge until she announces that she is going to sign off for the night, reminding everyone to tune in tomorrow, and her voice is replaced with music from a tinny piano.

* * *

November come with a breeze, but it isn't really, truly cold, and Finnick claims this is as cold as winter gets in Four. He is at the bakery, lounging at the counter, when Hestia stops in for a loaf. It's ready for her; pumpernickel is her favorite, and she comes in every other day to pick up a loaf. "Smells as delicious as always!" She smiles. "I'm having it with barley potato soup tonight."

"Isn't that what you always have it with?" Peeta asks.

She grins. "Guilty. But that's my favorite!"

"Try it with potato, leek, and onion soup," he says. "It'll amaze you."

"Nope," she says.

"I promise it's better!"

She shakes her head at him. "Do you know what? Here's what we're going to do. Make another loaf in the afternoon tomorrow, and come 'round to mine for dinner. I'll serve my favorite, _delicious_ soup, and you'll see why there isn't a reason for variety."

He chuckles. "Okay. Fine. But don't get your hopes up that you'll convert me."

She wags her finger at him, reaching across the counter to squeeze his hand before she leaves with the loaf under her arm.

Finnick clears his throat, drawing Peeta to look at him. "What?"

"Is there something that you might've neglected to share with me?" he asks.

Peeta frowns. "What are you talking about?"

"That," Finnick says, waving his hand at the door. "I'm talking about that." He stares at Peeta, and his brow creases slowly. "But you don't—Peeta, you _are_ aware, aren't you, that Hestia asked you on a date a moment ago? And you agreed? To a date? You didn't miss that, right?"

Peeta blinks. "That isn't what—"

Finnick nods. "That is what that was, Peeta, and it isn't news to anybody that Hestia likes you, but now I sense that it's news to you." He pauses. "Do you have feelings for her?"

"Not at _all_."

"I didn't think so," Finnick says.

It's quiet.

Peeta is stunned. He thought it was an invitation to dinner, yes, but he was going to bring his children, and they _are_ friends, aren't they? He thinks about the way that Hestia touches his arm constantly, and draws him into hugs; she compliments his baking, and the way he is with his children, and she _flirts_ with him. But it didn't occur to him that she interested in him _romantically_.

"I guess she didn't nudge you awkwardly," Finnick says. "Or, you know, stare at you when she didn't think you were looking. How were you supposed to know she liked you?"

"What?"

"That was how Katniss liked to flirt, right?"

"Oh. Right," Peeta says. "That, and bring you dead animals."

Finnick grins, but there's a softness to his expression. "Look at you, making a joke. I didn't know you had it in you."

Peeta smiles a little in reply, turning away from Finnick.

He needs to talk to Hestia.

She lives with a friend from Thirteen, and he stops off at their cabin after he closes the bakery for the night. Hestia is surprised, but she invites him in. "Do you want something to eat?" she asks.

He shakes his head. He doesn't need to come in, or a reason to beat around the bush. He needs to say what he came to say. "I don't mean to be presumptuous, but it occurred to me after you left the bakery that you meant to ask me on a date." He pauses.

Her smile drops slowly, and she nods. "Yes. I did." She looks at him knowingly, and he plows on.

"I care about you, Hestia, and I'm glad that you're in my life. But, honestly, I'm not ready to—I'm _never _going to be ready to—to move on. Katniss—she was my wife, but—but she was my friend, too, and my _protector_, and my life." He shrugs. "She was my life. I think she's always going to be my life. It's been over a year, but I don't miss her less today than I did a year go. I mean, I'm used to it. To missing her, and to being without her. I'm able to live with it. But I'm not okay with it. Actually, it amazes me that I _am_ able to live with it. If it weren't for my children, I don't think I could, and that—that isn't about to change. Not for a very, very long time, and that's optimistic."

He starts to apologize to her, but she interrupts him. "Don't. It's okay. I understand." She offers him a sad smile, and he leaves with that.

* * *

On some days, he lives in the imaginary. He dreams up scenarios in which she made her way to the bunkers in time; his mind places her in his memories from the year on the road, and he imagines her life in Four now. He passes day after day like that, living a better, imaginary life in his head.

But there are days, too, when he lives in the past.

He replays his memories on a reel, trying to relive them.

The smallest, most inconsequential moments are suddenly moments that he wants to crawl into, that he wishes desperately he could've stayed in. He thinks about the Games, and about the months after the Games. He thinks a lot, too, about when she fell in love with him. He knows it happened slowly, but he remembers the certainty in her admission when it came at last.

He wonders when it started, and when she loved him but didn't know it yet.

He remembers when he caught sick with a fever. Ash was a baby at the time.

He was in bed for days, and those are mostly a fog to him now. But he remembers vaguely the way that Katniss cared for him, stroking his hair, pressing a cold, damp towel to his face, singing to him, and he remembers when he woke to find that his fever was gone, and his head was clear. But when Katniss noticed that he was awake, touching a hand to his forehead, he refused to open his eyes. He felt her smile against his cheek. "Seems like the fever's passed," she told him.

"Nope. I'm sick. Cuddle me."

She laughed. "I don't want you to be sick," she told him. "It's boring when you're sick." The words were laced with such warm, honest affection, and she pushed her fingers into his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp.

"If you're bored, I suppose I—" He heaved a sigh. "—_might_ be able to muster the energy to have sex."

She laughed, nosing his cheek, and her eyes were bright when he met them at last.

He decides that she _must_ have been in love with him that day, and he wants to go back: to that day, to that bed. But that day's gone, and he rolls over in the bed he's in now, wiping his eyes.

* * *

They celebrate Annie's birthday in December with a bonfire. It's nice, gathering on the beach; they have grilled, salty catfish, and there's cake from the bakery, and moonshine that Finnick makes, and three older, toothless men from Four play their fiddles when Annie wants to dance.

Peeta plays on the beach with the children until pain starts to flare up in his leg.

It takes him a moment to find where Finnick sits on a blanket a ways off from the chaos, and he joins him. "I think I need to get my stump looked at," he says. Finnick nods in reply, taking a swig from the jug, in his lap and it's clear he isn't in the mood to talk. But that's fine with Peeta.

He rubs at his leg, and his gaze wanders to his children.

Penny trips, but Ash is at her side instantly, setting her on her feet.

"Ash is good with her," Finnick says.

Peeta glances at him, but Finnick stares at the children. "He is."

It's quiet. Finnick offers the jug to Peeta, and he takes a sip; the liquor burns in his throat, sitting warmly in his belly. "Today is Nell's birthday, too," Finnick says. "She was born on Annie's birthday." His fingers pluck at the threads in the blanket under him. "She, um, Annie, I mean, she told me once that Nell was the best present I ever gave her. She was an accident, obviously. But."

"Do you know, you've never really told us about that," Peeta says. "Hiding her, and everything."

Finnick raises his eyebrows, although he doesn't look at Peeta. "There isn't much to tell. Snow knew. There wasn't really a way to hide a baby from him." He pauses. "I always wanted children, but I was terrified when we realized that Annie was pregnant. I didn't know what Snow was going to do, and I knew there wasn't a way to hide it, or to act like it wasn't—like _she_ wasn't mine. It got worse when I realized what it meant for there to be two people I cared about."

He stops to drink from the jug, and Peeta knows to wait.

"Before it was easy in a way. I knew that he wouldn't kill Annie. If he did, he wouldn't be able to control me, and he knew that. My life was hellish, but I _knew_ that he couldn't kill Annie. But once there was a baby in the picture, that went out the window. If he killed Annie, he'd still be able to control me. He'd be able to use the baby for that. Or he could kill the baby, and I'd have to continue to fuck when he told me to fuck, or he'd kill Annie, too. It was torture, knowing that. I guess you know what's that's like, though."

"I tried not to think about it," Peeta says. "But it was all that Katniss thought about."

Finnick nods, passing him the jug.. It's quiet for a beat. "She was trying to find me," Finnick says. "Did I tell you that? She was in the hospital with Prim, but she ran before Prim could stop her. Prim says—says she wanted to find me. Except I was busy with Annie." He shakes his head. "I wanted to search for Nell, but everything was starting to collapse, and Annie was hurt, and—and I chose to get Annie to safety."

"If you hadn't, Annie would've died, too," Peeta says.

But he knows his words are worthless.

"She ran off to find me," Finnick says, and there's anger in his voice now, "and I didn't—I didn't try to find her. I used to promise her when she was little that I'd always come back to her. I had to leave her constantly go to the Capitol, and she used to make me promise her that I'd come back, and I would. I promised a hundred times. But when it counted, _I didn't come back for her_."

The idea occurs to him suddenly. "Katniss could've found her," he says.

Finnick glances at him.

"Nell was running from the hospital, right?" Peeta asks. "Katniss was running _to_ the hospital. They might've run into each other. They might've been together when—"

—_when they died. _

It takes Finnick a moment to respond. "I hope they were," he murmurs.

"Me, too."

Their conversation is brought to an end when Annie dances her way to them, insisting that Finnick dance with her, and he musters a smile, pushes himself to his feet, and takes her hand.

* * *

He is in the kitchen when the bell above the door to the bakery rings, and voices carry in from the street. He wipes his hands on his apron, starting for the front.

"—from District Twelve like you!" Mrs. Sherman says.

He's startled at the words. In the second before he comes face to face with the group, he realizes that a group must've come from the Capitol, and Mrs. Sherman brought them to Peeta; it's Madge, or Rory. Suddenly, he's hopeful that it's Rory, and that he's come to reconcile with Prim.

"Mr. Mellark!" Mrs. Sherman exclaims. "Look who wandered into town this morning!"

It isn't Rory. Or Madge.

The group with Mrs. Sherman have clearly been on the road for a while: they're unwashed, need to shave, and are in grimy, worn clothes; they have circles beneath their eyes, and bags thrown over their shoulders, and Peeta gapes at them. It's impossible. His mind is playing a trick on him.

Sammy Cartwright died. He didn't make it to the bunkers, and he died.

Even as he thin as he is, there are dimples in his cheeks when he grins. "Peeta Mellark," he says.

"Oh! Do you know each other?" Mrs. Sherman asks, smiling.

"We grew up together," Sammy says. "He was friends with my sister." His grin seems to grow impossibly wide. "I can't believe this." He starts to shake his head, laughing, and he surges towards Peeta suddenly. "I can't believe this!" The embrace startles Peeta, but he returns it, and the reality begins to sink in when Sammy pulls away after. Sammy didn't make it to the bunkers.

But he isn't dead.

"How are you not dead?" Peeta asks.

Sammy grins at him. "Sheer dumb luck. The bombs didn't get me at first, and I ran for the woods as soon as I had a chance. The bombs fell in waves, you know? I got out between waves. But what about you? Did you make it to the bunkers? I mean, you must have. But we searched the rubble, and we couldn't find anything. It was a while later—months after, but there wasn't _anything_. Nothing. We had to figure the bunkers didn't hold, and everybody in them was killed."

Peeta stares at Sammy, and his heart picks up, pounding wildly until he feels it everywhere.

"Who else—who made it to the woods, and—and made it?" he asks.

Sammy blinks at him for a moment before grin loosens slowly into a smile, and he nods. "She made it, Peeta," he says. "She's alive. Katniss is alive."

The breath leaves Peeta in a rush, taking his voice.

"She's in Eleven with Mary Mellark, and that little girl, Nell. Finnick Odair's daughter."

_She's alive._

It's impossible. How is it possible?

Shaky, tearful laughter rises up in Peeta, and he pushes his hands into his hair. "She's alive," he says, trying to soak the words in. "She's in Eleven?" he asks. "Is she okay? Is she—?"

"She was hurt in the bombings," Sammy continues. "I mean, she was hurt real, _real_ bad. For a while, I didn't think she'd make it. But she recovered, and that's when we tried to find a clue about y'all in the ruins. But we couldn't, and she—well, Mary was afraid that she might starve to death, 'cause she couldn't bother to eat. She was—" He pauses. "Peeta, your kids didn't—"

"They did," Peeta says. "They made it to the bunkers with me."

Sammy grins. "Well, that beats it all. Good. Good, I'm glad."

"But she thought they were dead," Peeta goes on. "She thought everybody was dead." The idea makes his chest tighten, bottling his breath. She thought that she lost everybody she loved.

But she didn't, and _she's alive_.

"It was hard for her," Sammy says. "But one day it was like she woke up, and she—_woke up_. I guess she realized that we needed her. She was better when I left. That's why I left—'cause I knew that she'd look after Mary, and Nell, and the twins." His eyes widen. "That's right! It turned out Mary was pregnant with _twins_, and we didn't know until she went into labor! One girl, Lettie, and a boy, George."

He claps Peeta on the shoulder, and Peeta shakes his head. "That's—"

"It's amazing, I know," Sammy says. "Hey, but you haven't told me who's with you? Did your brother make it? Or Delly . . . ?" His eyes search Peeta face, and Peeta knows the answer's clear.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs. "Bannock isn't with us, and neither is—neither is Delly."

Sammy clears his throat. "It's okay." His smile isn't as bright as it was, but he squeezes Peeta's shoulder, turning, and starts to talk about the men that he travelled across the country with, introducing them to Peeta. But it's hard to keep up with him; this is too much to take in at once.

She's alive.

She's in Eleven.

Sammy talks about when they were in Six, and Peeta thinks about the route he'll take to Eleven.

* * *

He isn't eager to leave his children, but he knows that Finnick's right when he says they have to.

If they take the children with them on the road, it'll double the time it takes them to cross the country, and Prim agrees to stay in Four with them. She cried when Sammy told her that Katniss was alive, but her tears gave way to laughter, and her excitement is irrepressible now; she is overjoyed, constantly breaking into smiles at nothing. "Get her back as fast as you can," she says.

He promises that he will, and Prim beams at him.

Annie is going to stay in Four, too, and she'll be able to help Prim look after the kids.

"But I can help!" Ash protests. "I won't slow you down!"

"Me, neither!" Davey says. "I'm fast, Papa! I'm really, _super_ fast!"

"What about your sister? If you come, who'll look after her?" Peeta asks.

They exclaim that Aunt Prim is going to.

He smiles. "But she needs her brothers, too," he says. "I know you want to come, but you have to believe me when I promise that I'll be back with her soon. I'll bring her back to you."

They agree at last, hugging him before he leaves with Finnick.

"I _knew_ she wasn't dead," Davey whispers.

Peeta smiles into Davey's shoulder, and kisses him on the cheek.

Sammy isn't going to come with them, and Peeta understands; he was on the road for months. But he draws them a map, showing them exactly where to go in Eleven, and they start off on their own. Peeta suspects that Finnick is tempted to try to _sprint_ to Eleven. Since he learned that Nell was alive, Finnick's been a whirlwind, asking Sammy about her, preparing to leave Four, worrying that something is going to happen to her in the time that it'll take them to get to Eleven.

"Nothing's going to happen to her while she's with Katniss," Sammy assures.

His words make Peeta happy in a silly, stupid way. That's right. There isn't a reason to worry about Nell; she is safe with Katniss. It's strange, realizing that Katniss lived a life that was separate from him for a year. He wants to know everything that happened to her, everything that she thought, and felt. She's alive. What is she doing at that moment? Is she with Nell? Is she hunting, or skinning the game that she's caught? Or is she with Mary, helping her with the twins?

He'll know soon. He'll be with her soon.

"Two months," Finnick says. "If we cut right into Eleven, we'll make it to them before summer."

* * *

The humidity is awful, worsening the longer they're on the road, and the sun that beats on their backs slows their progress. But it turns out that there are villages across Eleven that are populated with survivors, which makes it easy to travel the district: the villages are places for them to rest safely for a night, and to stock up on supplies; they cross through close to a dozen.

In a little over a month, they reach village that Sammy circled on the map.

Peeta imagines the moment when he sees her, and what it'll be like when she sees him. He might see her before she notices him, and he thinks about how he'll approach her, and how she'll react. Is she going to believe her eyes? She might spy him before he's able to spot her. Is she going to whisper his name? Is she going to run to him? He thinks about what he'll say to her, what she'll say to him. He might not say a word at first. He thinks about how it'll be to hold her. To kiss her.

He plays the scene his mind a thousand times in a thousand ways.

It doesn't matter how it happens; it's going to be perfect no matter what.

But when they try to cross the field that separates them from the village, a voice barks at them to stop, and a woman levels a gun at them. "Whoa!" Finnick says, stepping away from her in surprise. They were excited to be this wonderfully, tantalizingly close; she caught them off guard.

"Make a move, and I'll blow your balls off," she says, stalking across the distance to them.

"Noted," Finnick says.

"What do you want?" she snaps. Her face is shadowed under a floppy straw hat, but her hands are steady, and she points the gun directly at Peeta's chest. "Answer me!"

"We came to find our family," Peeta says. "We don't want to hurt you, or anybody. I'm—"

But the woman tilts her head up, and the hat slips off to hang from a ribbon her neck. "I know who you are," she says. Her face is weathered, but there's a slow, growing smile on her face. "Peeta Mellark, and Finnick Odair." Her eyes flicker to Finnick. "I didn't recognize you at first."

"But you recognize us now," Finnick says, questioning.

"I do," she agrees, and she lowers the gun. "Who wouldn't? My name's Addy Weaver."

"It's nice to meet you, Addy," Peeta says. "I'm sorry that we frightened you. We came to find my wife, Katniss, and Finnick's daughter, Nell." He gestures at Finnick, who smiles. "We thought they were killed in the bombing, but we learned recently that they weren't, and that they were—" He falters, seeing the look on Addy's face. "—were in Eleven," he says. "In this village."

There's an apology in her gaze. "I'm sorry, but they're gone."

"What do you—what's _gone_?" Finnick asks. "What are you talking about?"

"They left," she says. "They _were_ with us for a while. Katniss, and her sister, and her sister's twins, and—and that sweet little girl. Little Nell. But they left, oh, must've been six, seven months ago. I don't know where they went. It was abrupt, happened quick. They didn't give us more than a day's notice."

Finnick states at her. "They left," he repeats.

"Do you know _why_ they left?" Peeta asks, trying to swallow his panic.

"To find—well, to find _you_, I think," she says. "There was a lady from Twelve on the radio. Do you know there are folks in the Capitol, broadcasting on the radio now? Our folks, good folks, and Mary told my cousin that a lady from Twelve was on, which made her hope that others from Twelve might have survived, and they wanted to find them. But that's everything I know. I'm sorry. I'll ask about, see if anybody knows more than I do, and I'll—I can take you to where they lived? Nobody's moved in after them. How's that? I'm sorry, it's the best I can do for you."

"That's fine," Peeta says. "That's—" He nods. "Thank you."

Madge.

Katniss heard Madge on the radio.

Addy takes them into the village, and she drops them off at a cabin that's far off from the front. "I'll ask about," she promises. The cabin is empty, and there isn't a trace to show that it was lived in, or to give a hint where it's occupants might've gone. Two cots with a trunk between them, a stove, a sink, a cabinet, and three chairs around a table, and that's it. That's what's left.

But they'll figure this out.

She's alive, and they'll figure out where she is.

"Okay, we know they heard Madge on the radio," Peeta starts. "That's how they found out they were wrong about the bunkers, and that we might be alive, and that's why they left. It must be."

"Right," Finnick says. "But where are they now?"

"They would've gone to the Capitol," Peeta says. "That's where Madge is, and she says it every night before she signs off. I bet they decided to follow the tracks for the train. I mean, that's how Katniss knows to get to the Capitol."

"_Right_. But you haven't answered my question, detective. Where the fuck are they _now_? If they left _seven_ _months_ _ago_, where are they? It doesn't take that long to reach the Capitol."

"It took us that long," Peeta says.

"We started in Thirteen, _and_ we stopped for the winter," Finnick replies. "Do you think Katniss would have stopped for a break? That after she thought you and her kids and Prim were dead for a _year_, only to learn there was a chance that you were alive, she decided—Peeta, do you really think she stopped off for a _break_ along the way? _Katniss_?" He shakes his head. "It would have taken three months _at the most_ to make it to the Capitol, and that's generous. Once they reached the Capitol, it would've taken, what, a month to get to Four? That means they should've reached Four at least a month before we left, and that's _at the least_. So. What happened? Where are they?"

"We'll figure it out," Peeta says. "They're alive. We know that much."

"Do we?" Finnick asks.

Peeta stares at him. "Yes," he breathes. "_Yes_. Look, I know you're—disappointed. I am, too. But they're out there somewhere. They've been alive this whole time, and that hasn't changed. They're out there, looking for us, and now we're looking for them, too. We're going to find them."

Finnick looks away, nodding. "I know, I'm sorry." He clears his throat. "I know."

They look at the map, trying to decide where to go. But there's really only one possible option: they have to head to the Capitol, taking the path that Katniss would've taken, and hope that eventually they catch up to wherever it is Katniss, Mary, and Nell must have been forced to stop.

* * *

He isn't able to sleep that night. He curls up on a cot that Katniss might've slept in, and he wants to do it over. To go back, and refuse to give up on her.

But that's what he did.

He gave up on her, and he left her.

He didn't think to look for her away from the ruins, didn't bother to imagine that she might have escaped Thirteen during the bombings. He _left_ her. She was hurt badly; Sammy told him it took months for her to recover. That was when she needed him the most, but he wasn't there. He left.

He's going to find her. He has to.

He presses his face into the cot, wishing that it smelled like her. That something was left to prove that she lived in this cabin, that she isn't a ghost, living only in his memory. To make it real that she wasn't killed, and that she was alive for the _years_ he thought she was dead. That she _is _alive.

That she is older, and scarred, and _alive_.

Light starts to creep into the cabin, and his head is stuffy in a tired, painful way.

He left her, and he can't take that back, but he'll make up for it. He'll get her back, and he'll never, ever let her go.

* * *

Mostly, the road is quiet. They keep to the tracks, and there isn't a soul in sight for days.

But they stumble onto spots where it's clear that fires were stomped out, and they pass a grave that's marked with stones. They pass a body, too, and stop to bury him; his skull is bashed in, and it's clear that his things were rifled through.

They cross into Nine, wandering into a small, empty town, and that's where they meet Gretel.

She recognizes them immediately, and welcomes them into her home, offering them dinner, trying to smooth her hair across her cheek to shadow the pockmarks that scar her face. She talks nervously, saying they were lucky not to run into scavengers on the road. "They'll slit your throat for the penny in your pocket. But listen to me, prattling on, and you can't get a word in. What brings you to Nine? What are you on the road for?"

Finnick explains. "Have you seen them?"

"I haven't," she says. "I'm sorry. We used to see travellers a lot on the tracks like we are, but it's been a while since things were busy like that. Not since the twitches got us. Seems like it got everybody, don't it? That's how it is now. If the scavengers don't get you, the twitches does." She says the words bitterly, only to glance suddenly at Peeta in apology. "But I—I'm certain nothing's gotten to Katniss!" She flushes. "I'll reckon she's gone on to the Capitol, you know—"

"What are the twitches?" Finnick asks.

"The sickness," Gretel says, looking between them in surprise. She explains that the survivors in Nine left their city in a factory a while ago, building this town for the traffic that followed the tracks. "It was a sight to see," she says. But that was before the sickness. It came suddenly, and it spread quickly. Only a few were able to survive. "If it gets you, it makes you twitch. Makes you jerk in your bed, you know, and claw at your sheets. But that isn't what kills you," she says. "It's the diarrhea, and the dehydration, and the fever. That's what gets you. It cooks your brain."

Her explanation leaves Peeta without a voice.

But she continues with wide, apologetic eyes, volunteering to ask in town about Katniss, Mary, and Nell. "If they passed through, chances are that somebody remembers. We aren't the town that we used to be, but a few of us _are_ left, and nobody would forget meeting Katniss Everdeen."

He manages to smile, thanking her.

It isn't until later that Finnick says what Peeta refuses to. "I don't know which is worse: to think that scavengers brutally murdered them, or that they got the twitches, and died slow, painful deaths." He stares at Peeta. "But it's got to be one, right?"

Peeta curls his hands into fists.

No. It can't be like this. He can't have learned that she was alive only for it turn out that it was too little, too late. That she might as well have died in the bombing, and he might as well have stayed in Four. No. _No._ She came back to life; he got her back. _He was supposed to get her back._

"We don't know that they're dead," he says. "Not yet." He looks at Finnick. "I won't believe that until I see it with my own eyes. I'm not giving up on her that easily a second time."

No matter how long it takes, he _is_ going to find her.

For thirteen years, they've been star-crossed. But that's going to change. He's going to find her.

* * *

The plan is to scour the town for information in the morning, but they don't have to.

Gretel shakes Peeta awake, exclaiming that she talked to Stan, "and he thinks he remembers when Katniss came though!" Her eyes are bright, and Peeta is stunned for a moment, trying to process her words. But he does, and hope swells in his chest. They need an actual, _proper_ place to start, and this is it. This is their lead. Gretel ushers them to the door, talking a mile a minute about Stan.

Stan is a middle aged man with about three wiry black hairs on his head, and he purses his lip in annoyance when Gretel introduces them to him.

"Tell them what you told me," Gretel says, "about Katniss, and—and everything."

"I told you that I'm not sure it _was_ Katniss Everdeen," he replies, rubbing at his neck.

"But you remember a woman who might've been her!" Gretel exclaims.

Reluctantly, he starts to nod. "I remember two women who came through with a girl, and two little ones. It was months ago. That's what I told you." He looks at Peeta. "I don't know that one was your wife, but she did have real dark hair." He pauses, and Peeta nods at him. This needs to be real; this needs to be _something_. "She was small, and—and had this awful scar on her face. The other lady was blonde, and—well, I remember them like I do 'cause the girl had the twitches."

"The girl," Finnick repeats.

"They had this little girl with them. She was five, I guess. Or six. Real little thing with dark hair." He hesitates, but Gretel waves a hand at him to continue. "It looked like the fever hadn't gotten her yet, but you could tell she had a week at best. We told the women to put her in the red house—that's the house where we put the sick to keep them from—from, well, you know. But they wouldn't. They wanted to go up to Eight. There were rumors at the time that there was medicine up in District Eight. Even if there were, we told them the girl wouldn't make it that far. But they wouldn't listen, and—and that's it. They left. I don't know what happened to them."

"And you don't remember their names, or anything?" Gretel asks.

He shakes his head.

"But that sounds like them, doesn't it?" She looks eagerly at Peeta.

"It does," he says. He glances at Finnick, but Finnick's gaze is on the ground.

"I guess that isn't what you wanted to hear," Stan says, apologetic.

Peeta smiles at him. "It's what we needed to hear," he says. "Thank you."

It hadn't occurred to him that there was a possibility they'd get one back, and not the other. That Katniss might've survived, but not Nell. He assumed it was all or nothing. He figured if they found one, they'd find the other. They'd get them both back. Looking at Finnick, he knows that Finnick figured the same. Now that they know better, he isn't able to hold Finnick's gaze.

There isn't a reason not to go to Eight. It's their lead.

But they make their way through the town that day anyway to be certain.

They talk to everyone, learning that others remember what Stan remembers. But if Katniss was the scarred, dark-haired woman that they remember, they didn't realize it. Peeta doesn't know what to think, or what he wants the truth to be. If it was Katniss, it's likely that Nell's dead now.

If it wasn't, where does that leave them?

In the morning, they leave for Eight.

It doesn't take a day to reach the district, and the place is as desolate as Peeta remembers. Gretel says the survivors are in a city in the north, and they head in that direction, following the line that she drew on a map for them. It's easy to follow the path that others have taken before them; they count over a dozen small cooking fires along the way, find a lost cloth dolly, and are faced with six freshly dug graves before the one remaining city in Eight looms suddenly in the distance.

They are welcomed into the city, and it _is_ a city.

It's larger than anything that's left in Panem at this point, or that Peeta thought was left.

The mayor says their names before they do. "Finnick Odair, and Peeta Mellark," she greets, shaking their hands. "Lucrecia Niemenn. It's an honor to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Niemann," Peeta says, nodding.

Finnick doesn't waste a second before he explains why they came.

She frowns. "I'm sorry, Mr. Odair. I'm afraid you've come this way for nothing. They haven't come through. It's true that travellers come this way in droves, coming for the syrup, and it's impossible to keep track of them all. But I'm certain I would have heard if Katniss came through."

"If it helps, she wouldn't have looked like a sixteen-year-old girl with her hair in a braid," Finnick says. "That seems to be difficult for people to grasp." There's an edge to his voice.

She blinks at him, and Peeta steps in, asking her about the syrup. It turns out that the rumors in Nine weren't wrong: there is medicine for the twitches in Eight. There was a shortage in the winter, though; they were forced to ration the syrup. Children received it without question, but adults were put on a list. But that means that if Katniss got Nell to Eight, Nell would've gotten it.

He tells that to Finnick, and Finnick nods. "But didn't you hear? They didn't make it to Nine."

"She doesn't know that, and _you_ know that," Peeta says. "This place is huge."

If they have to, they'll search every damn inch.

They start in the market, talking to everyone they see. But person after person directs them to the cemetery, and Peeta grits his teeth, thanking the person, and talks to the next.

He isn't going to search for them in the cemetery. It's pointless.

Finnick disagrees, and they split up. Finnick searches the cemetery, which stretches endlessly into the distance, and Peeta searches the streets. One week, and he starts to think about how kind everyone is to him. He knows that people are willing to help him without question because they recognize him. But if nobody recognizes Katniss, who helps her?

Herself. Katniss doesn't need anybody to look after her; she never has.

She's fine. She got Nell to this city, and she got her the medicine. She's alive, and she's fine.

* * *

He works his way from the market in the center of the city to the smaller, crowded streets that twist off into alleyways. The tenements on these streets are rickety grey buildings that are packed with people. They are busy, and nobody bothers to notice Peeta until he forces them to.

Honestly, it's strange.

He's grown used to how people notice him immediately; it's been that way for years.

But it's nice, too. He is able to move through the crowds easily, and it gives him hope that this is where Katniss is. That this is where he'll find her.

Except after three weeks in Eight, there isn't a trace to be found.

He knows that Finnick's given up. He didn't find their names on the stones in the cemetery, but he's convinced that they died before they made it to Eight, and Peeta hasn't found a thing to prove him wrong.

He's about to go into another towering apartment to knock on doors when the voice floats to him.

"_Down in the valley, the valley so low_." It's a girl, singing in a high, off-key voice, and Peeta turns from the door to the tenement, searching for her._ "Hang your head over, hear the wind blow_." His eyes catch on the children that are gathered in a knot in the street, shooting marbles in the dirt. "_Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow_. _Hang your head over, hear the wind blow_!"

He knows that song.

It's from District Twelve.

The girl sings it with such familiarity, singing like it's been sung to her a hundred times.

"_Roses love sunshine, violets love dew, Angels in Heaven know I love you._"

He spots her at last. She's small, bony, and tanned, has long brown hair down her back, and red raw scrapes on her elbows. Her song breaks when she laughs at something, but she continues happily, _"Know I love you, dear, know I love you, Angels in Heaven know I love you!_" She grins.

It can't be.

His breath stops in his chest, and _it can't_ _be_.

"_Nell_." It comes out at a whisper. He clears his throat. "Nell!"

She looks up, and his heart begins to pound in his throat. It takes a moment for her eyes to land on him. He is paralyzed, staring at her, and she stares back. Until suddenly she breaks his gaze, snatching up a marble from the ground before shooting to her feet as quick as a dart. He blinks, and she takes off down the road.

"Wait! Nell, wait!" He chases after her.

She's quick, disappearing from his sight for seconds at a time. But he's desperate not to lose her, straining to keep his eyes on her. She turns the corner, and his way is blocked. He shoves the stranger, earning a curse, and turns the corner, too, running down the alley that she must have run down to emerge into another crowded street, and he's lost her. She's gone.

No._ No_. He turns in a circle. "Nell!" Nothing.

Until there she is, gesticulating wildly in explanation to a woman.

His heart bangs against his ribs in disbelief, and he can't move, can't speak, can't take his eyes off her. Dressed in a shirt without sleeves, dark trousers that disappear into worn dark boots. Dark hair that's cut short, curling at her ears. Her back is to him, but Nell's isn't, and her eyes widen in alarm when she notices Peeta.

Nell stabs the air with her finger, pointing, and the woman turns to see at what.

The breath leaves him in a rush. Her face is thin, and melted pink scars mar her cheek, tugging at the corner of her lip to pull it down. But he knows that face, would know it anywhere.

She stares at him, and he sees her lips move, sees the shape of his name.

It spurs him into action, making tearful, choking laughter bubble up. His eyes blur with tears, and he starts towards her.

But she reaches him first, shouting his name when they collide.

Her arms circle his neck, and her fingers dig into his back, and he clutches her to him; he can't believe she's real, runs his hand up her back, listens to her sob his name into her ear. She's crying, repeating "Peeta, Peeta, _Peeta_!" She turns her face into his, and kisses wildly at his ear, his cheek, his mouth. Her hand fists into his hair, and her breath washes hotly against his face. She laughs through a sob, kissing him, and he stares and stares at her, drinks in every single detail in her face.

"Aunty," Nell says.

Katniss seems to nod a little, and her feet touch the ground. But she doesn't take her eyes off Peeta, and she doesn't pull away from his arms. She stays right where she is. He runs his hands over her hips, up her back, trying to memorize her shape, to make it certain that she's real, and _there_.

She hiccoughs, and he laughs.

Her hands cup his face. He presses a kiss to her palm, smiling into her skin. "_Peeta_," she whispers.

He pushes his hands into her hair, drawing her into to _kiss_ her, but the words pour from him suddenly. "I found you," he breathes. "Katniss. I'm sorry, I thought—I left, but—it's you, Katniss, it's you. I found you. Katniss, I love you, I found you, Katniss, I'm sorry, I love you—"

She laughs. "My sweet boy." But a moment later, her fingers curl into his shoulders, and the joy in her eyes gives way to something different at last: something like fear, and hope. "Peeta, does this meant that Pennycress—?"

He nods, grinning at the relief that floods her face. "I got her to the bunkers, and she's fine. She's in Four with Prim—"

"Prim?" Katniss says, clutching at his shoulders so tightly that it hurts. "And Davey? Did—?"

"Yes, Katniss, _yes_, Prim, and Davey, _and_ Ash—they made it. They made it to the bunkers, and they've been with me, and they're safe, and they're waiting for you. They miss you so much." She isn't able to smile through her sobs; her tears overwhelm her, making her gasp for breath, and he pulls her into his chest. "They're okay. They made it. They made it, and we'll all be back together soon." She clings to him, and he closes his eyes, breathing her in. It's okay. They made it.

* * *

He knows it'll take days to catch up on everything that he's missed in the years they were apart.

There's a lot that he needs to explain, too. He starts with how Sammy came to Four, and that's when they learned that Katniss, Mary, and Nell were alive. They set off for Eleven, only they weren't in Eleven.

"We thought—" He shakes his head.

In rushed, breathless words, Katniss starts to explain. Peeta was right to believe they set off to find Madge in the Capitol after she came on the radio. They followed the tracks for the train, only Nell caught the twitches, and they were forced to drag her up to the city in District Eight.

"We had to separate as soon as we arrived," she says. "Mary from us, I mean. We didn't want the twins to get sick. If we didn't have to worry about scavengers on the road, I would've insisted that Mary stay in Nine with the twins while I take Nell to Eight. Actually, I tried to, and she wouldn't have it." She grins tearfully. "But we split as soon as we got to Eight."

"Do you know where they are now?" he asks.

She nods. "That was months ago. We split, and she and the babies never caught sick. I did, but I was able to sweat out the fever, and Nell—they had medicine for Nell. I couldn't have done it without help, though." She pauses. "I owe my life to Effie."

He blinks. "Effie," he repeats.

"Effie." She grins.

It turns out that Haymitch insisted that Effie was rescued from the Capitol, but they couldn't get her to Thirteen. Instead, she was hidden in Eight. That's where she stayed, and that's where she found Katniss. "Once I recovered, we got ready to leave. Me, Nell, Effie, Mary, and the twins. But we didn't get far from the city before the scavengers got us. Just two, and we got away, but—" She pauses. "Effie was a force to be reckoned with; after Mary knocked one off his feet, Effie beat him to death with her shoe."

"What about the other?" Peeta asks.

"I got him," Katniss says, and Peeta waits. "He tried to take me with him when he went, though. He stabbed me." Her smile is ready, knowing; she expects his panic, and she's right to: he is stunned. But she takes his hand, pushing it under her shirt to press his fingers against a thick, raised scar an inch long. "Obviously, I'm okay," she says. "But they had to drag me back to the city, and it took weeks for me to recover fully. I was stuck in bed until a week ago. That's why we haven't left before now. But we were going to soon. The plan was to go with a group that's headed out next week."

He stares at her.

"What?" she says, smiling. "What is it?"

He kisses her, cups her face in his hands. "The twitches get you," he starts, "and scavengers get you, and you—" He shakes his head, and she presses her cheek into his hand, smiling.

"I always was a survivor," she replies.

"I shouldn't have given up on you," he says. "We searched the ruins for you, but we should have—we didn't think to search the woods, or—I shouldn't have given up like that. I'm sorry."

"Don't. It doesn't matter now." She kisses him. "It's okay now. I've got you back."

He nods. "I know. I know, and I'm never letting you out of my sight again. Not for anything."

* * *

It turns out that Nell's run off. He panics when he realizes, but Katniss shrugs, saying that Nell isn't easy to pin in place. She'll have gone to the apartment to tell Mary, or into the market where Effie is. "She didn't know who you were," she says. "She didn't recognize you." The words make worry bloom in her expression, and he knows about what: Nell is older than Penny.

But he isn't Nell's mother. He's nothing to her.

Katniss is _everything_ to Penny. And to Davey, and to Ash.

He starts to talk about the children, making Katniss laugh a little at the stories. She tears up, too. "They didn't give up on you. Davey swore that you weren't dead." He kisses her small, trembling smile, promising that Penny is going to know who she is. "She's missed you so much."

They cross through the city to where Finnick is in the market, bartering for supplies to get on the road.

He doesn't see them approach. "Finnick," Peeta starts, and Finnick glances at him briefly in acknowledgement, asking him what he thinks is fair to trade for a flashlight. "_Finnick_."

Finnick looks at him, and this time his gaze moves to the left. To Katniss.

He stares, and Katniss smiles. "Did you miss me?" she asks.

In reply, Finnick makes a noise in his throat.

Katniss laughs, surging in to hug him. Finnick is stunned, and it takes a moment for him to return the embrace. He starts to smile when she pulls away. "Sure, I missed you," he says. His eyes flicker across her face. "Nice scar."

"Nice beard," she replies, and he grins. His eyes are bright with tears, but he swallows visibly, and—"Nell?" he breathes. But he shakes his head before she answers. "I know she got sick."

"She did," Katniss says. Finnick's jaw locks, and he drops his gaze, nodding. "But she recovered."

His face snaps up.

"Do you want to see her?" Katniss asks, smiling.

"Is that—you—she's—?" He breathes a laugh, glancing at Peeta, and Peeta nods.

Katniss leads them from the market, to the street where Peeta found her, and into a tenement. She talks about how she found Nell in Thirteen when the bombs started to drop, and she blacked out. Her story merges into what Sammy told them, but Peeta drinks in the words, keeping his gaze on her. She's alive. He found her.

Six flights up, and voices float to them. "—_kissing _him," Nell says, and Finnick sways on his feet.

Katniss puts a hand on his shoulder. "Nell!" she calls.

There are footsteps above them, and Nell's head pops into view over the railing from the landing above them.

"Nell!" Finnick says, gaping at her.

Nell stares at him. "Daddy?" she asks, halting. Finnick starts up the stairs, tripping over his feet with his eyes on her, and Nell's face breaks into a grin. "Daddy! Aunty, it's my daddy! DADDY!"

Nell starts to tumble down the stairs, but she doesn't fall when her feet catch on a stair; Finnick reaches her, scooping her up, and skinny little arms wrap around his neck, skinny little legs around his waist. He starts to cry, telling her how much he missed her, and how much loves her.

Effie follows her down the stairs. That is Effie, right? Peeta isn't certain for a moment, staring at the pale, lined face. Light brown hair is tied in a bun with a shiny green ribbon, and she gasps dramatically, beaming at Peeta. "My _dear_," she says, holding out her hands. He grins. It's Effie.

He pulls her into a hug. "Is Haymitch with you?" she asks. "Or is he back in—well, wherever it is you came from? Where _did_ you come from?"

"District Four," Peeta says. "But, Effie, Haymitch—he didn't make it."

She blinks. "Oh." She looks away from him, touching at her hair.

He looks at Katniss, and she tries to smile for him. "What about Bannock?" she asks. But she knows the answer. "He didn't make it, did he? Or he'd have come with you."

"He dropped Ash off in the bunkers," Peeta says, "and left to find Mary."

It's quiet while the words sink it. But when Finnick looks at them with Nell's cheek pressed to his, Katniss smiles. "Come on," she says, taking Peeta's hand. "Let's go up. We have a lot to catch up on." She nods at Effie, who straightens, mustering a smile, and hooks her arm in Peeta's.

Their apartment is three rooms: a living space that's merged with a kitchen, a small bedroom, and a smaller bathroom.

Mary is speechless when they file in.

Nell isn't, exclaiming to "Aunt Mary" that this is her daddy. Mary looks from Nell to Katniss to Peeta, and Katniss starts to explain quickly that Sammy made it to Four, and that's where everyone from the bunkers was. He told them that Katniss, Mary, and Nell were alive. "They came to find us," Katniss says.

There's a boy in Mary's arms with a pacifier in his mouth; he's got blue, blue eyes, and frizzy yellow fuzz on his head. Bannock's son, and it doesn't take long for Peeta to spot Bannock's daughter, sitting on the couch; her hair is similar in shade to Mary's, but her eyes are identical to her brother's. Katniss starts for her, and the girl lifts up her arms expectantly before Katniss picks her up. Her fists curl into Katniss's shirt, and Peeta swallows back the tears in his throat.

Mary listens quietly when he tells her about Bannock, and she excuses herself to the bathroom. Katniss follows, passing the baby in her arms to Peeta.

"Hey, Lettie," he says. "Hey, sweetheart." She blinks, sucking on her fingers, and he tucks a yellow baby curl behind her ear.

"She's darling, isn't she?" Effie asks. Her eyes are glassy with tears she hasn't cried yet. "But you haven't told me yet. Did your sweet little ones make it?" He smiles, and she gasps before he's able to answer. She presses a hand to her heart in relief. "Thank _goodness_," she says, sighing.

Eventually, Katniss emerges from the bathroom with Mary. Peeta smiles at her, and she manages to smile back with red, watery eyes.

* * *

Usually, Mary sleeps in one bed, and Nell joins Katniss in the other while the twins sleep in the crib between the beds. Nell is confused when Katniss says that Finnick is going to sleep in the bed with her tonight. "Where are you going to sleep?" Nell asks, and Katniss tells her not to worry, that she'll sleep on the sofa in the other room. "But—" Nell starts, and Mary hushes her.

In the dark, their kisses are sloppy, rushed.

She tugs on his boxers, shoving them down, and he pushes her nightgown up to her waist; he kisses her, rocking against her, and it makes her whimper into his mouth. She pulls on his shirt, tying to yank it up, and he draws away from her to tug it over his head while she scrambles to get her underwear off.

He settles between her legs, and her ankles hook behind his knees.

She holds his gaze when he sinks into her.

They breathe in sharply together, and her fingers dig into his back; he presses a kiss to her open mouth, but he doesn't look away from her gaze when he draws out, pushing back in.

Tears gather in her eyes. "Don't—don't leave me," she gasps, staring at him. "Don't ever—"

"Never," he breathes. "Never again, never." He thrusts into her sloppily, choking on a groan when she aches into him. "I'm never going to leave you," he swears. "I'm always—"

"_Always_," she says, gazing up at him with something close to awe in her eyes.

"Always," he pants, and he kisses her cheek, her mouth. There's a tearful, slack smile on her mouth, but it melts into a gasp, and her head presses back into the sofa, her whole body tightening against his. Her eyes stay on him when she comes, and she takes him with her; the moment she clenches around him, he starts to come, too. She hugs his shoulders, smiling against his mouth. "I love you," he says, crying now. "I love you."

He drops his forehead to rest against hers, and her hands run up his back.

But he needs to roll off before he crushes her; he collapses beside her, grabbing her arms to tug her against his chest. "Careful," she breathes, turning onto her side. "Or I'll fall off the sofa."

"We can't have that," he says. "Guess I'll have to keep you closer." She smiles. He runs a hand up her arm, and they stay face-to-face like that for a moment.

But he isn't able _not_ to lean forward, kissing the flush in her cheek. He bends to kiss the scar on her throat, to kiss her collarbone. It's easy to pull down the thin, loose strap of her nightgown, baring her breast, and he kisses the pink, scarred skin that's bared, too. He kisses the top of her breast, feeling her heart race against his lips. He kisses her nipple, and her fingers slip into his curls, stroking his hair. "I love you," she murmurs.

He presses his face to her breast for a moment, breathing in, and lifts his head to kiss her on the mouth. "C'mere." He tugs her into his chest before he turns, flatting with his back on the sofa, and she settles into his side with her head on his chest. "Let's stay like this forever," he breathes.

"Okay."

He smiles. "Then you'll allow it?" he asks.

"I'll allow it," she whispers, and she turns her head to press a kiss to his chest. "Just like this."

* * *

It takes what's left in the summer to reach Four, and longer to make their way to the water.

But they do, arriving in September.

Katniss starts to fidget, and Peeta squeezes her hand, smiling in reassurance when she looks at him. It's evening, and the sun is low in the sky, dying the sky a brilliant, glowing orange; everything is quiet, recognizing that the day is done. But as soon as they step onto the street that leads to the bakery, there's a shout.

The boys stumble onto the street, and Peeta hears Katniss breathe in sharply before she takes off.

Ash reaches her first.

She drops to her knees to hug him, and Davey piles on a moment later, wrapping his arms around her neck. "Mama, I was waiting," Davey says. "I was waiting, and—and every day I waited, and I knew, and—" He can't talk fast enough, and Katniss laughs tearfully, littering kisses on his chubby, flushed cheeks. She kisses Ash, too; his eyes are squeezed tightly shut while he hugs her.

Peeta squats to kiss Davey on the head, brushing a hand over Ash's hair.

"_Katniss_!"

It's Prim, gaping at her for a moment before a grin starts to spread across her face.

Katniss laughs, only to choke when Penny stumbles into sight at Prim's side. Penny stares at her, and her eyes flicker to Peeta. "Papa," she says, but her gaze is back on Katniss, and her eyes are wide, hopeful. "Mama?" she asks, taking a step to her, and Katniss starts to nod quickly in reply.

"Hey, baby," she whispers.

"Mama," Penny repeats. "Mama!"

Katniss reaches for her, and Penny's hesitant, halting steps give way to a run; Katniss is crying when Penny surges into her arms at last. Prim reaches them, trapping Penny against Katniss when she hugs her. "Little Duck," Katniss says, smiling, and Prim breaks into tears. She looks at Peeta over Katniss's shoulder, and he grins at her, hugging Davey, and Ash, and Penny, and Katniss.

This is it.

This is the moment that he wants to live in forever: this moment with his family in a knot on the ground, hugging and crying and kissing.

* * *

In some ways, everything seems to fall into place after that. Katniss is home, and it _is _home now that she's with them. In their apartment over the bakery, they are safe, and together, and it's home. The children won't know the Games. They don't have to fear the Snow. They are together, and everything about the future seems bright, hopeful. It seems like something to look forward to.

Rory is with them now, too; it turns out that he arrived only days after Peeta left.

"He followed me," Prim says.

"Who wouldn't?" Katniss replies.

Prim moves into the apartment over the apothecary with Rory, and Mary takes the room in their apartment that Prim stayed in. Eventually, she'll have to find a place for herself; after all, the twins aren't going to be able to share a room with their mother forever. But it's nice to have her with them for now. Katniss is close with Mary, and it startles Peeta in the most strange, wonderful way when Katniss tells the cobbler that she lived in Eleven with her sister for a while.

He's glad to know that she wasn't alone for years.

That she was able to count on Mary, her sister.

It's hard to find the words at time, but in the quiet, in their bed, he explains the years without her, and Katniss listens, stroking his hair, and she talks about those years, too, describing how she was trapped in bed for months after she thought she lost everyone, how she forced herself to live.

Slowly, they start to recover from those years.

But in other ways, things are tough. There are always going to be ghosts, and it's tough.

It's tough to know that Haymitch didn't live to see Snow brought to justice. It's tough to know that Posy died when she was a child. It's tough to think that the twins are never going to know their father, and he is never going to see them grow up, to know they're safe, and always will be.

It isn't only the past that haunts them either; it's what they've missed, and the way things have changed.

Katniss struggles to adjust to way that the children are older than she remembers. That they have grown, and things have changed them, and they aren't exactly who she lost in the bombing. But that'll get better with time. She'll adjust, and she's with them now, gets to see them grow up now.

Nell flounders, too, trying to fit in.

She is attached to Katniss, and she wants to live with Katniss, doesn't understand why she can't. It's hard for her, too, to understand that Romy wasn't meant to replace her. She runs away from her house at night, and nobody realizes until she crawls into bed with Katniss. Finnick tries to talk to her, but she screams at him that he _abandoned_ her, and she hates him, and she hates Annie.

"Give it time," Katniss says. "She's little, and she's been through the worst."

But when Nell is gone, Katniss sits on Davey's bed, and she asks the boys. "Do you understand where I was, and why I wasn't with you?" They claim they do, but Peeta listens to her explain softly to them why it looked to everyone like she was dead, and how she thought they were dead.

"I knew you weren't," Davey says. "I knew you'd find us eventually."

"I knew, too," Ash says.

Katniss smiles. "Did you look after your siblings while I was lost?" she asks. Ash nods eagerly, and Katniss brushes his hair away from his face. "I knew you would."

"I did, too," Davey says, and Katniss smiles at him.

"But you aren't going to have to leave again, right?" Ash asks. "Like to go to the Capitol, or—or?"

"Nope, never," Katniss says. "Never, ever in a million years. Now you're stuck with me. How's that sound?" In reply, Davey hugs her, and Ash holds up a pinky; she hooks it with hers. "I double dog pinky swear," she says. "_Now_—it's time for bed. What do you want to sing tonight?"

* * *

His nightmares haven't stopped, and there are times when the nightmares seem to find him in the day, and he imagines that something terrible has happened to her when she isn't in his sight. That's why he keeps her in his sight, why he's always with her, and he knows she feels the same.

She wants to hunt, and he goes with her.

If he's in the bakery, she's on a stool beside him.

Peeta knows that people notice. Finnick comes into the bakery in the morning, only to pause, looking around, and shake himself. He raises his eyebrows at Peeta. "Where's the other one?"

"In the back," Peeta says.

"Naturally," Finnick replies.

But nobody blames them, and it isn't a question that they'll be together when the nightmares come at night.

He sees Katniss in the rubble while bombs explode, and blood pools around her head; Nell shakes her, screaming, Katniss stares unseeingly in reply, and Peeta wakes with a jolt. He is in bed, breathing heavily. His eyes find Katniss. "I'm here," she says, kissing him. "It's okay. I'm here."

His heart slows, and the tension leaves his body. He smiles, nodding at her, and she wipes the sweat off his forehead with her sleeve. "I'm good," he breathes.

She turns, settling back into the bed, and she reaches for his arm.

He spoons her, and the baby moves under his hand.

It was an accident, but it feels like it was a choice. Katniss says that everything feels like a choice now. That if it hadn't happened the way it happened, it would've happened another way. Not because it was inevitable, but because she would've chosen for it to happen. Their marriage, their children. This baby they made when they were so happy to be together that they forgot to bother with contraception.

Annie thinks it's a girl, saying that Katniss is carrying the baby low, and that means it's a girl.

Katniss shrugs, replying that it doesn't matter to her. If the baby's a girl, she'll be a sister for Penny to love, to adore, to care for. If the baby's a boy, he'll be their third, but he'll have a mother who loves him dearly, and _wants_ him dearly, and he is going to _know_ that he's wanted.

He presses his fingers to her belly, and the baby presses back.

Katniss hums a little, mumbling "go to sleep," and he doesn't know if she's talking to him, or to the baby. He closes his eyes, giving into the warm, sleepy tug that quiets his mind. "I love you," Katniss whispers. He smiles into her neck.

**fin. **


End file.
